Hampstead
A hill, eight hundred acres of Heath, and planning policy with genuine teeth.
The District
Hampstead was built on a slope and the slope decided everything: streets bend rather than grid, houses step down in threes and fours, and almost every principal room in the older stock faces east because that is where the view was. Building new here means working with a section rather than a plan.
The Heath is not a park attached to the neighbourhood; the neighbourhood is what accumulated at its edge. It is also why the consents are hard-won and the height limits are absolute, which is exactly as it should be.
