The all-new Elephant and Castle contains conflicting multitudes. What once was a mass of unkempt buildings and traffic-snarled gyratory roads — much of my early life seemed to involve peering out at the baffling, reflective bulk of its massive roundabout from the back of our Datsun Cherry — is now the glossy, contentiously reconfigured site of one of the city’s longest and bitterest gentrification battles.
The brutalist Heygate Estate and the Fifties-era shopping centre have both been razed despite sustained local opposition. Elephant Park, a £2.5 billion property developer-owned sprawl of landscaped greenery, schmancy hospitality businesses and expensive housing, has sprung up to ostensibly replace both.
