Zamienie is changing

It's been a while since I last visited Zamienie, much has changed. The threat of a new distribution centre that would have seen hundreds of trucks rolling through has lifted - in its place will be something called 'KampusPlus', which will emerge behind the chipboard fencing to the left in the photo below. A Żabka convenience store offers some retail opportunities to shoppers that have newly moved in. Skips are full of cardboard boxes that once contained fridges, cookers and flat-pack furniture.

In the fields full of poppies that gave their name to Osiedle Polnych Maków ('estate of the poppies of the fields'), the campus, a mixed-purpose development led by the Politechnika Warszawska, will appear. The street leading up to it is named after Thomas Alva Edison. This is no longer Warsaw; this is part of the gmina (municipality) of Lesznowola. So Warsaw's city authorities don't have to give a stuff about how many new estates get built here, or how the people living here should get into and out of the city centre.

Below: cryptographer Jerzy Różycki, one of the Polish team that cracked the original Enigma code is commemorated in the name of this new street, running off ul. Arakowa.

The new bits of Zamienie are architectually more attractive and more functional than the earlier blocks, like this one below on ul Waniliowa ('Vanilla Street' - metaphorically too). Estate agents outnumber food shops. Note the cars. Zamienie is served by just two bus routes, the 715 and 809, the bus stop being almost a kilometre from this point. And W-wa Jeziorki railway station is over 2km from here (a whole kilometre further than my house across on the other side of the railway line in Warsaw, in Jeziorki).

And so most households have to be two-car families. This, below, is ul. Arakowa and the Osiedle Polnych Maków, completed in 2009. Some of the houses have been occupied for over a decade. Note: there's no pavement. The drives outside these terraced houses lead to garages big enough for a VW Polo circa 2004, but way too small for a modern SUV. So one car's parked on the drive, the other outside. Nowhere for pedestrians to walk. So pedestrians have to brave the street. Mums with baby buggies. Shit planning. All the shittier when the extra traffic associated with the KampusPlus - first the construction plant, then the thousands of workers - start driving down this way.

You can see the problem in this photo, below. Too big car. Teensy-weensy garages. Now, I don't know the individual circumstances of these folk, but I guess that owning two cars means you can't afford a house in Warsaw proper. How about dumping the big car and buying a house closer to public transport and to the amenities? Arguments about "it's nice to live among fields" cut no ice as the fields around here will soon be developed. Far from shops, far from schools, far from the city centre, wholly dependent on the car. There are just two junctions connecting the ever-growing Zamienie to the main road; early-morning rush hours must be hell for drivers trying to get out of here.

Things will improve once the S7 extension is complete. Below: looking down from a temporary hill of soil onto the new bridge that will link Jeziorki (on this side) with Dawidy Bankowe and Zamienie (on the other). The bridge should be wider than the viaduct over the railway line at W-wa Jeziorki station. So even if the traffic if flowing easier here, it will jam up once it gets around the corner.

How will Covid-19 affect where we chose to live? Will people trade the convenience, amenities and attractions of urban life for the lower population density of the far suburbs and exurbs? To early to say.

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This time seven years ago:
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This time eight years ag0:
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This time 13 years ago:
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