We once had thousands of subscribers on Kings Cross Environment a site important for lobbying to traffic calm Kings Cross. At some stage, almost 15.000 people read us. We were heard by stakeholders and moved and shifted some things with our words. When the big Kings Cross developments were built, they were quick to create a commercial “community” site, that the big powers of the area can control (who were we, the “old” residents, with our nostalgia, mostly in-the-way-demands and visions?). I was once only one of several authors, and then so many moved out of the area and stopped writing. I was then left with the torchlight in my hand as the “last man standing” or rather writing. I did ask a few promising new people to join to write to tell stories, was encouraging them, and tried to follow planning developments in the area but the return was meagre. I am therefore unable to push posts up to the former glory. I see the numbers, they went down, year on year. The answer is defo on social media, that said, probably not on Facebook. Call it natural change. It is a fast-paced world now, few have time for writing for free or doing much community-based stuff, though there will always be some. Of course, many do insta, twitter and tiktok. But it is often less communal labour and more opinionated monologues.
The bottom line is: I can’t do it on my own anymore. As I write this, I think I am hereby announcing the end of Kings Cross Environment and WC1X.org as their impact is nowadays too low and even my time too precious. Even just last year I had believed it all can be resurrected, but the stats tell me no.
If anyone has had similar experiences or suggestions it will make me feel better about this realisation. But for now, best wishes for a democratic future, in whatever form it may have to be.
Thank you for reading Kings Cross Environment over the years and supporting our united cause! Let’s celebrate our successes and move forward nevertheless with confidence. If it is important enough something else will emerge.
Kings Cross Environment 
Hi Daniel, I’m sorry to hear that you are folding King’s Cross Environment, I can understand that the lack of reaction and feedback must make you question whether it’s still worthwhile. I’m not sure if there just isn’t the community there once was, or whether it has just passed us by.
After our battle with British Rail over the high speed link terminal, the late lamented Randall Keynes passed his campaigning group, the South Caledonian Community Association, on to me. This sounded very grand but was in fact a one man band. I carried on making occasional comments on local planning applications until the Council stopped sending out lists and put it on line. This was just too much of a fag to negotiate and I gave up, so don’t feel too bad, everything has its time.
Best wishes,
Tony Rees
Thank you very much, Tony! Best wishes!
Perhaps also a sign of the times, I’ve only just seen this posting. I am also very sorry that it’s end-of-the-line for KingsCrossEnvironment. Will Perrin originally established the blog partly because he wanted to have a linear record of the many local issues that he was involved with and, back then, a “blog” was a thing. Will has subsequently carved out a niche promoting ultra-local micro news publishing. But times change, technology moves on, attention spans have shortened and Twitter, Insta, Whatsapp have become dominant. I realised with a slight shock that we had let a similar WordPress site wither (callylabourcouncillors.org.u) and hadn’t posted anything for 4 years! This was partly because we also had a domain glitch. We’re thinking quite hard whether to revitalise (or not). Anyway, KingsCrossEnvironment has been a hugely effective source of information and alternative analysis during a decade and more of incredible change and pressures in our neighbourhood and I will miss it’s presence in my newsfeed.