A rendering showing how Oxford Circus might appear after adaptation. The actual design will be selected later this year. — Rendering courtesy of Westminster Council
LONDON: One of London’s most important public spaces is about to get a dramatic pedestrian makeover.Oxford Circus, where two of the city’s busiest shopping streets intersect, will be transformed into two semi-circular pedestrian plazas, separated by a roadway with substantially reduced traffic, according to an announcement this week.
Aided by closing some feeder streets to traffic, the changes will begin this year, with a design chosen this summer from a competition overseen by the Royal Institute of British Architects.
Packed with shoppers year round — claustrophobically so in the run-up to Christmas — Oxford Circus is one of the city’s busiest commercial hubs. It’s lined by a circle of imposing neo-baroque buildings that could so easily function as an inviting pedestrian-friendly plaza that it actually feels strange that, as yet, it doesn’t.
Meanwhile, Oxford Circus is known locally as much for its pollution as its stores, with Oxford Street, the road that bisects it, a high-walled bottleneck notorious for trapping fumes.
Plans to fully pedestrianize the street — made complicated by its vital role as a channel for numerous bus routes — have been mooted for years. Preparations to ban motor traffic from the London Mayor’s office on this strip were in place as recently as 2018, when they were overruled by local authority Westminster Council.
Westminster rejected those plans on the grounds that “the pedestrianisation scheme that was under consideration is not what local people want,” an assertion not entirely backed up by the council’s own public consultation.
Tensions between a Conservative-led council and London’s Labour mayor may have partly caused that rejection, but now both the mayor and council seem to be in harmony in their support of a makeover. It’s one that, in the light of upcoming changes, is as much essential as desirable.
In 2022, London’s new Crossrail link — a major subterranean heavy rail network linking London with its eastern and western exurbs — should open.
Already a major subway hub, Oxford Circus will host one of Crossrail’s busiest stations, channeling an additional 60 million pedestrians a year.
The extra sidewalk space, public seating and green areas planned for around Oxford Circus should help with the area’s intensified role as a city centre gateway. Put simply, those pedestrians will need somewhere to go.
