As shopping centre giants Hammerson and Whitfield join forces to grab a stake in the new-look Croydon, are things starting to look up for the ‘Chav capital’, asks Veronica Simpson

Croydon's chief misfortune, in terms of image, is to have been developed during a time of great architectural and commercial ambition but little sensitivity to placemaking.

Take the journey from central London, for example: emerging out of East Croydon's partially refurbished station the visitor is thrust into a slew of bus and tram lanes overlooked by the quirky No 1 Croydon Tower designed by Richard Seifert (aka the 'Threepenny bit' building). Actually, the sight of this block is rather cheering - a reminder of the optimism and ambition that lay behind Croydon's Sixties' redevelopment, aimed at turning this London suburb into a mini Manhattan.

As you head towards the centre, however, it turns into something of a visual assault: first the nasty 'Visit Croydon' enterprise centre plonked next to the station (a prefab hut with all the allure of a motorway services station), followed by one example after another of the worst of Sixties and Seventies architecture - bulky brown concrete blocks peppered with smoked glass windows here and there a giant Rubic's Cube of green squares, adorned with concrete lozenges. There really are some perfectly decent historic and modern buildings (Croydon College, the magnificent Minster, the Clocktower and Library, the Electric and the Nestle Buildings) but they are mostly obscured by 'fat slab' office blocks and multistorey car parks or by the motorways that sever this civic centre from its surrounding communities.

As far as retail goes, the usual high street global chains are all there, peddling their overpriced cappucinos. But, hang on a minute - there's a newish Waitrose supermarket; and a few yards down the road a Wagamama outlet gleams in a determined attempt to lure passengers across the Wellseley Road 'car canyon'. Clearly there are aspirational brands that continue to have confidence in Croydon.

In fact, there are quite a lot of people with confidence in Croydon - as evidenced by a recent and protracted battle between two of the UK's mightiest shopping centre developers, Hammerson (owner of Brent Cross and recreator of Birmingham's Bullring, among others) and Westfield. So determined were they both to secure a big stake in Croydon's retail and regeneration plans that when their competitive proposals reached stalemate (due to complications around the ownership of the Whitgift Centre), they formed a joint venture to operate the new scheme.

Mike Kiely, director of planning and building control at Croydon Council, says: 'That we have Hammerson and Westfield doing a deal is a bit like saying Sainsbury and Tesco have got together to do a development in Croydon: it means they are desperate to do it.'

Why should they be so keen to get a piece of the Croydon action - a place recently described by a Daily Telegraph writer as 'Britain's Chav capital'? Kiely says: 'It's the one section of London that doesn't have that kind of modern retail offer.'

Connectivity is a major factor in its appeal. East Croydon is reputedly the second busiest interchange in the UK, after Clapham Junction. There are trains every five minutes out of London Bridge (taking as little as 12 minutes). It's not far from Gatwick Airport. Bus and tram routes are extensive. There are even plans for the London Underground to extend to West Croydon. Added to which it has 7,000 car parking spaces (though Kiely admits, a lot of these aren't that handy for the retail hotspots).

What's more, it may be a little down at heel now, but it still pulls in the shoppers. It is supposed to have more square footage (albeit of a very mixed order) of retail than pretty much any other urban shopping centre in London. Hammerson - which acquired Croydon's Centrale shopping centre in 2011 - says Croydon has the UK's 13th largest shopping population, with a primary catchment area of 1.7 million people. And it's not just shops that Croydon is offering.

Says Kiely: 'Our plans for the centre of Croydon are very ambitious. Croydon town centre has nearly 744,000 sq m of offices - about a tenth of the size of the city. Most of that is tired, though there's new stuff coming in. We need to reinvent that and we're already getting underway with that. Croydon is expanding. It has the third largest (predicted) growth in London beyond Tower Hamlets and Newham. We are going to add about 7,000 homes in the centre, out of 21,000 new homes in total. What we are going to see in 15 to 20 years' time will be a very different community.'

But Croydon's ability to appeal to shoppers, businesses and residents very much depends on how all of this mass development ultimately looks and feels - not to mention the skill with which Croydon Council and its business partners knit the adjacent yet disconnected urban landscape back together.

Luckily, there has been a lot of high-quality brainstorming and master planning going on behind the scenes for the past half decade, including a great deal of positive press around Kiely's 'Placemaking' (aka Urban Design) Team - a young team of architects, urbanists and designers, led by architect Vincent Lacovara, who has been brainstorming how to enhance and retain a certain 'Croydonness' within the five main city centre master plans. Their co-conspirators include Studio Egret West, Make, OKRA, East, Gehl Architects, and CZWG Architects.

So what is Croydonness? Lacovara explains: 'I grew up in Croydon, in a Thirties' semi in suburbia. But the view from the front windows across the clay roof tiles was of the mini Manhattan of Croydon town centre - all these big, modern, confident, brash buildings in the town centre and the shopping centre as well. But it worked, and everyone I grew up with was confident with that combination.

'Croydon is also very confident and has a sense of its own importance and identity that goes back centuries. I have looked at the Saxon map of the parishes of south London and there's a huge one called Croydon, where the Archbishops of Canterbury had their summer residence. It was quite a significant place. And as the centuries went by there were other reasons why it became important.'

Over all of its regenerations and reinventions (of which this is the fourth), some common themes emerge, says Lacovara: 'There are these interesting juxtapositions and contrasts. We get big against small, old against new - interesting combinations that I suppose have been criticised by the architectural community over the years as messy or unplanned. But if you start to read it with different eyes it comes across as unique. They start to conform to a character.'

So what Lacovara's team has encouraged in the masterplanning is to go with that grain, rather than against it - working to enhance and amplify the character of the specific areas, keep the good, old buildings and create new ones that are sympathetic to them. By East Croydon station, for example, with its skyscraper, railway and highway vistas, more (but better) skyscraper apartment and office blocks are perfectly appropriate. In Croydon's old town, however, they're not.

But most importantly, Lacovara's team has been ensuring that there is maximum connectivity between each of the areas - more like a series of Parisian quartiers that flow from one to the other. As Kiely puts it: 'We're trying to address the blocking effect of our "fat slab" office buildings.' And key to this is the range of public-realm improvements that proliferate across both the council's and its developer partners' proposals.

Saffron Square, for example - a big glossy, aspirational residential scheme from Berkeley Homes (designed by Rolfe Judd Architects) - will include a new landscaped public square flanked by cafes, restaurants and shops. The council is part way through £50m-worth of public-realm improvements thanks to a grant from the Mayor of London Boris Johnson's regeneration fund (to facilitate post-riot improvements for the worst afflicted London boroughs). Already there are two new crossings for Wellesley Road, and further cycle and pedestrian-friendly improvements are promised. A new bridge at East Croydon station will link with a pedestrian walkway down towards the Whitgift centre, creating a muchneeded fast route from station to central shops, offices and leisure attractions. And this will operate 24/7.

As for the plans for this much-anticipated shopping centre, sadly Westfield wouldn't allow us a peek at them and the revised scheme brought about by January's merger hasn't yet been finalised. Will it look anything like Westfield Stratford? 'I hope not,' says Kiely. 'There's not going to be much new frontage. The new bits will be designed in a way to complement the Victorian mixed high street character.' The architect is Allies & Morrison which restored the Royal Festival Hall to dazzlingly positive effect).

Maybe that aforementioned Daily Telegraph writer is right when he concludes: 'Croydon may be a Chav city today, but tomorrow it'll be full of cocktail bars.'

What's on the cards for Croydon shoppers

The £1bn mixed-use Westfield/ Hammerson scheme is promising a 'comprehensive and transformational change to Croydon', combining 200,000 sq m of retail, leisure, residential, hotels and offices.

It will unite two previously competing shopping centres: Centrale, which has Debenhams and House of Fraser as anchor tenants, and the Whitgift Centre, which has M&S, and used to have Allders before the borough's oldest department store finally limped into receivership last year (shortly after celebrating its 150th birthday). It is strongly rumoured that John Lewis will step into Allders' shoes. This would give the joint Whitgift/Centrale shopping centre four strong anchor tenants. A John Lewis spokesperson said: 'We have consistently expressed an interest in establishing a full-line department store in Croydon. Our position has always been that this can only be delivered as part of a major step change for the town centre.'

That step change will hopefully be achieved through the ambitious master plans underway (see main feature) aimed at making Croydon's town centre a more attractive, aspirational and connected suburban city, as well as the plans to bring what is primarily a mid-market and frankly dog-eared local shopping street up to the standard of London's other gleaming consumer hubs.

As part of the deal, Westfield is taking charge of the design and construction of the project - which means that it will look fairly similar to the existing Allies & Morrison scheme, with one or two 'minor amendments' according to Mike Kiely, head of planning and building control for Croydon Council (for a look at the previous proposal, go to Allies & Morrison's website - Westfield wouldn't allow us to reprint it here).

Kiely says: 'Our approach has been to look at the centre, understand what's wrong with it and what's good about it, and come up with a series of plans to renew it. The idea with the Westfield/ Hammerson deal is to effectively renew the Whitgift and bring forward a new centre - a combination of demolition and rebuild. They are still working through the details of the mix. They will do it in a couple of phases so they can continue trading.'

From Kiely's understanding, a major multiscreen cinema plus a substantial restaurant, cafe and bar offer will now be clustered around the entrance to what was the Whitgift Centre, while the oppressively tunnel-like corridors of both Whitgift and Centrale will be improved, presumably substantially daylit, and laid out in a figure of eight around the four anchor stores, maximising exposure to shop fronts. The mix of apartments (four tower blocks of flats are included in Allies & Morrison's scheme), hotels and office blocks on site plus the improved connectivity to all the adjacent Croydon areas will hopefully create a vibrant space for day and night-time recreation.

As for the adjacent Old Town area (mostly decent Victorian shops and houses, but currently more shabby than chic), Studio Egret West and Urban Practitioners are master planning that, says head of Croydon Council's 'Placemaking' team Vincent Lacovara, who wants 'to ensure an area that's so important to the space - including (the historic) Surrey Street Market - doesn't suffer from having a major retail development next door. It has every opportunity to benefit from it if it's thought through.' The new public street connecting East Croydon station to West will help both areas, says Lacovara: 'People will be able to percolate through for a different experience in Old Town.' Think farmers' markets, artisan bakers, creative and independent retailers, restaurants and coffee shops... and suddenly it looks as if it might just be possible to keep all of Croydon's diverse shoppers and citizens happy, all of the time.

This article was first published in fx Magazine.