Thread

Apple Music to open concert venue in Battersea Power Station

71 points · 101 comments · dabinat

dofm · 1790058214 · focus · HN ↗
Oh dear.
The redeveloped Battersea Power Station is one of the most soulless, dead-eyed, wealth-obsessed places in all of London. This is a terrible place to put something like a music venue, unless your target market is the adult children of emigres with unexplained wealth, and I think it speaks to Apple’s sanitised, emotionally-distant, luxury-focussed worldview that they would consider it.
Incredible building. Awful development. They could have donated ten million quid to the Music Venue Trust instead.
The free U2 album looks like the work of a tastemaker by comparison.
1. hbcdbff · 1790061549 · focus · HN ↗
  I suppose you’d prefer the power station to have remained a derelict wreck.
  Honestly, people like you are what holds this country back.
  1. earthnail · 1790062548 · focus · HN ↗
    It turned into a luxury place because that's where the highest margins in construction are. Every developer wants to build high margin houses, nobody wants to build low margin houses.
    City development must cater to all its inhabitants, and if you have a prime estate like the Battersea Power Station, it's a failure, from the city's POV, if you burn that only on high margin development. From a negotiation standpoint, the city negotiated badly here. The city has to accommodate the needs of less wealthy inhabitants in other means now, but without the negotiation leverage that a high margin property can provide.
    If you view it like this, the complaints "only luxury flats" are pretty rational. The city negotiated badly.
    dofm · 1790063634 · focus · HN ↗
    There actually is some "affordable" housing in the wider project but only because there was a very long battle to keep the developers to their legally-bound promise to build some affordable property that they — of course — tried to wriggle out of.
    <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/20/developers-people-money-community-social-housing-battersea" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/20/develo...

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