The Great Reclamation: Rethinking London’s Streetscapes

EGY Design attended The Great Reclamation event on the 30^th March, a talk by Sophie Thompson, Director at LDA Design, held at Temple Bar London — a fitting venue for a conversation about opening cities up.

Once a historic gateway that controlled the movement of people in and out of the City, Temple Bar now hosted an evening of ideas about doing precisely the opposite.

Sophie guided the room through three contested and historic areas of London where LDA Design’s streetscape projects are seeking to challenge traffic domination, reduce severance, and create conditions in which families, cyclists, and the natural environment can genuinely thrive.

What emerged was a clear-eyed account of both the opportunity and the friction involved in changing how we think about street space.

Key takeaways

• The main constraint isn’t space — it’s a culture shift. Streets have been designed the same way for decades. Getting everyone on board with change is the hard part — but once it happens, initial naysayers tend to come round quickly.
• It’s not about removing all vehicles — it’s about balance. Cities still need to function. But we can do far more with the space we have and do our best to phase out unnecessary movements over time.
• Coordination is everything. Tight corridors, competing stakeholder interests, and complex politics demand transparency. Showing only the polished end result — without the journey behind it — risks creating confusion and resistance. Bringing people on the journey matters.
• Utilities don’t just influence design — they often dictate it. What gets built can come down to what’s feasible to divert, and who pays for it. Barcelona’s model of shared cost responsibility between the city and utility companies offers an intriguing counterpoint to the UK approach.

The evening closed with a quote from the London National Park City Foundation that offered a quietly ambitious vision of what the city could become:

“We want more birdsong, ultimate frisbee, hill rolling, tree climbing, cycling, hedgehogs, volunteering, sharing, outdoor play, kayaking, clean air, otters, greener streets, outdoor learning, board games, outdoor art and hilltop dancing in the city.”

— London National Park City Foundation

Hard to argue with that.

For us at EGY Design, it reinforced something we’ve long understood — blue-green infrastructure delivers the greatest value when it shapes a project from the outset.