Below: these cranes are visible from ul. Dawidowska; this is a brand-new estate of flats going up in the grounds of the former vaccine plant in Zamienie. Address - ul. Waniliowa (lit. Vanilla Street). Moni asks what the point is of moving right out to the very edge of town to live in a flat rather than in a house with garden. Indeed.
Outside the old Zamienie complex, out in the fields, is the estate called Osiedle wśród pól (lit. 'Estate amid Fields'), complete with that phantom bus stop that appeared a year ago, still not served by any Warsaw bus route. From this point it is two an half kilometre walk (or 3km drive) to W-wa Jeziorki station. When the S7 extension is built, these new estates will effectively find themselves cut off from Jeziorki by a major expressway junction, Węzeł Zamienie.
When this development was started, it was indeed, an Estate amid the Fields. Very soon it will become an Estate amid Estates (Osiedle wsród osiedli). Doesn't sound so appealing.
Below: this is ul. Polna, Nowa Wola. No asphalt, a dirt track that's dusty in summer, muddy in late winter/early spring and in late autumn. And yet the car is literally the only way out of this place. We are 3.5km by foot/4km by car from W-wa Jeziorki station. Once the S7 has cut these houses off from the east, from the railway line, from the shops on Puławska, residents will find their lives seriously inconvenienced. The developers, no doubt, will deny all knowledge of plans to take the S7 south down to Grójec when they dreamed up this scheme. But the architecture I like, it puts me in mind of Taos, New Mexico in the mid-1950s.
Below: this neoclassical effort at the southern (asphalted) end of ul. Polna will pass without comment.
Below: an access road in what was the old Zamienie vaccine plant; bit by bit the old character is disappearing. Before long, the S7 will be roaring past, just a couple of hundred metres from here.
Warsaw's outward sprawl continues. Despite the availability of derelict land for building (post-industrial developments are happening close to the city centre), there's still an appetite among developers and buyers for facility-free estates in featureless fields just outside Warsaw's borders, where there are no zoning plans.
"Build it, and they will come?" Probably.
This time last year:
Long-term memory, awareness and identity
This time two years ago:
Language and politics
This time three years ago:
Trafalgar Square, then and now
This time five years ago:
GM's city car for Europe fails to wow me
This time six years ago:
A biblical sky
This time eight years ago:
The parable of the Iron-Filings Factory
This time 11 years ago:
Got to get ourselves back to the Garden
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3 comments:
Why build flats? The developer is probably aiming for a bigger profit.
One potential market is future commuters on the new motorway. People travelling for work outside Warsaw, European commuters looking for a small bolthole near the airport. Young people looking to get a toehold on the property ladder in a good area, following the advice "buy the cheapest property you can in the best area you can."
Other buyers will be investors looking to rent to such people.
@ Anonymous
"...future commuters on the new motorway..."
Today I took the train in towards the tail-end of the morning rush hour. The S2 was chockers to the west of Węzeł Lotnisko, the bulk of that traffic heading up the S79 into town. Eastwards, towards Węzeł Puławska, traffic was flowing freely. Meanwhile, at the top end of the S79, traffic was totally stationary as it merged with Rzymowskiego by W-wa Służewiec station. And this before the new S7 extension brings more cars in from the south.
Meanwhile, my train was just nine minutes late :-)
Does anyone know what they are going to do with the north bit of the S79? As you say getting more cars onto it to shudder to a halt there seems counter productive.
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