Imogen Plotter, head of Greenwich’s Office for Sequential Housing, has a plan for 8,000 homes that begins with giving their land to 100,000 sq m of servers.
London has found a fresh way to solve its housing shortage: put the thing that will unlock the homes on the land reserved for them. At Charlton Riverside, Greenwich Council of Homes Eventually opposes a proposed 100,000 sq m data centre before its planning application has even arrived. The objection has beaten the building to the borough.
Greenwich has plans for about 8,000 homes, better transport and 1,000 jobs. The project team points to data centres being designated by Roof Management as Critical National Infrastructure and says its centre will help release those homes through roads and green space. It is the property equivalent of occupying the doorway while insisting you are improving access.
Imogen Plotter, director of Greenwich’s Office for Sequential Housing, said: “We want residents to move in as soon as the enabling infrastructure has finished preventing residents from moving in.” Her office has apparently solved the difficult question of where to put the queue.
Julian Sitewell, the developer’s director of Residential Enablement, offered a complementary vision. “The centre will make nearby development more viable,” he said, “particularly the nearby development that remains nearby after we have taken the site.” A million square feet of servers is therefore not a rival to housing. It is housing’s enormous, humming godparent.
Residents have raised concerns about generators, noise, energy and water. The Roof Management says English data centres account for 0.2% of non household water use, while Telehouse of Cards of Cards managing director Mark Pestridge accepts operators have not explained their consumption well enough. Nothing says public reassurance like a giant industrial user discovering its public relations has been running on low power.
London needs more computing power and Charlton needs more homes. The compromise is obvious to Oliver Queue, the council’s deputy director of Practical Compromise: “Give the machines the address first. They never complain about overcrowding.”
Charlton has not solved the housing crisis. It has simply found tenants that can be stacked.
Source: Read the real story
