Total bollards: the iconic ‘eco-Blade Runner’ roundabout that became a grim £132m ‘abomination’

Boasting hovering haloes and futuristic forests, Old Street roundabout was meant to be a shining beacon for Britain’s very own Tech City. Instead, we have 120 hefty bollards and paving built to deter rough sleepers

Computer-generated PR images often outshine reality, but rarely has so much been promised and so little delivered as at Old Street roundabout in east London, finally complete after more than a decade in the works. It was supposed to be the radiant hub of the UK’s very own Tech City, the much-vaunted Silicon Roundabout around which a vibrant community of startups would orbit, fizzing with ideas.

In 2012, the then prime minister David Cameron pledged £50m to transform this undistinguished traffic intersection into “the largest civic space in Europe” – a shining beacon for our “aspiration nation”, where tech companies would rub shoulders with young innovators in a dynamic, multilevelled, interactive landscape. It was eagerly championed by his Bullingdon club chum and then mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who saw in it the chance for another novelty infrastructure project to add to his collection of costly follies. But their Nathan Barley fantasy never came to pass.