doml,
Probably worth checking out what Perryman meant by a troll - 'someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community'. How right you are Perryman.

Personally I rather liked the design that you chose for your 'grand design'. As a detatched house it would have worked well and there are some excellent examples of modern design in SE23 with which it could have taken its rightful place. However, in my opinion the problem with your design is that your are replacing a semi-detatched house with no respect for the streetscape or your neighbours. I don't think that it helped that it was initially a conversion, but became a full scale demolition of a semi-detatched house, so that you could avoid paying VAT.

One thing you notice in East Dulwich is that their houses respect their neighbours (with the exception of two award winning battleships on the top of the hill). This actually helps to engender a sense of community rather than acting to divide neighbour from neighbour.

Knowing some of your neighbours I find that they are generally open-minded and good natured people. But I do not think they liked the damage you wish to do to the streetscape, to their views, or to there house prices. You may not agree with them, but they have as much right to object as the law allows. However, once a planning decision has been made by three councillors, there is little that objectors can do to overturn this, except in the most extreme circumstances.

Moving back to the topic in hand,
What is nice in SE23 is that we have some people who go to the good private schools in the area and some who go to the good state schools in the area. Unfortunately East Dulwich does not have such good state schools for secondary education, which is why many of them came to school in Forest Hill.

I do not think there is a big difference between the people who live in East Dulwich, Forest Hill, Honor Oak, or Perry Vale. There is a difference in our high streets but I think the East London Line, the reopening of the pool, and hopefully some improvements to car parking, will make a substantial difference to Forest Hill and we will see more shops opening in the town centre. One or two million pound houses will not really make the difference you seem to expect.