The Guardian: "I found utopia – it was in my mind." (Not in Argent's King's Cross development then.)

"We thought the perfect future would be automation and endless leisure. In truth, it was always less tangible"

Link to web site

"Thinking back to the way we imagined our future in the 1960s, the striking thing is the small part money played in our utopias. Once nuclear war had been ruled out as a possibility, the big challenge that remained was what our teachers and essay questions called “the problem of leisure”. We would have lots of it. Automation would bring shorter working days without cutting wages. The zero-hours contract was unimaginable then, at least as part of the world to come rather than the dark past of Tolpuddle and Speenhamland.

"In future everyone would work in spotless white factories and offices – by housing its winding gear in glass and concrete, even a coalmine could be included in this bright picture – and knock off early to go home to leafy crescents in new towns. How would they fill their hours? In the fifth form, we wrote solemnly about making music, playing sport, reading books and painting. We didn’t mention drinking, or much consumption of any other kind. Our utopia was orderly, well-behaved, and remarkably free of material appetites.

"Last Sunday I thought I’d found it. In the late afternoon under a deep blue sky (the kind all utopias require), a couple of us walked around the new development at King’s Cross, where 67 acres of disused railway sidings, gasworks, warehouses and wharfs have been transformed into one of the capital's most-fashionable districts. Our walk took us through quiet streets of Georgian houses and an old municipal estate where every pub had closed down, until we reached Regent’s canal and struck west along the towpath."