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Post Peak Neasden

Part 2 Project 2007
Stephen Smith
Oxford Brookes University Oxford | UK
Suburbia’s foundations are built on the perception of a stable political, economical and cultural environment. However, the permanence of these systems cannot be guaranteed. ‘Post Peak Neasden’ deals with the pending issue of peak oil in the culturally diverse suburbs of Neasden and Brent.

Rather than an apocalyptic view of suburbia’s demise, this project highlights the localized responses that generate a new ‘aware’ suburbia. The complex equilibrium between delivering denser living patterns and the creation of produce(energy/food) becomes a local concern. A localised socialist network coupled with the introduction of small scale production methods will create new rituals in which the community finds definition.

Stephen Smith


A complex re-thinking of the Gujurati flavoured London suburb of Neasden. Here suburbia’s utterly unsustainable consumption systems has been subjected to intense cultural, political and environmental pressures. What emerges is a very localised production/consumption economy in tension with its global connections. Our trip to Gujurat, prompted an image of a radically densified Neasden whose existing wide roads and front gardens are re-configured into narrow and intense tuck-tuck serviced streets flanked by existing houses and new blocks of workspaces. Robotic micro farms cover every available surface and the crop layout of the neighbourhood is programmed to grow signs visible from above.

2007
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