Peckham - south-east London's regeneration hotspot: 2,000 new homes, train station facelift and town centre revamp planned for SE15

South London favourites Christopher Stark and the Multi-Storey Orchestra will make their BBC Proms debut in September— in a municipal car park in Rye Lane, Peckham.

It will be the latest übercool event to help tempt buyers and renters away from overpriced Hackney, Hoxton and Dalston via the London Overground to the SE15 postcode where they can find cutting-edge clubs and cafés, gigs and galleries, rooftop bars and a foodie night markets.

Peckham's multi-storey car park shot to fame with campari bar Frank's Café. It is now busier than ever and being turned into 50 affordable art studios and workshops plus pop-up stores, galleries and events spaces, while the area's first council-sponsored festival celebrating all things creative will take place in September.

And more than 2,000 new homes — public and private — are in the pipeline as part of an Area Action Plan.

The first of these are at Wood's Road, where apartment blocks clad in warm brick have their own green space and also face onto Cossall Park. Prices start from £450,000. Call Crest Nicholson on 020 3437 1273.

The local council has also woken up to Peckham's draw. Rye Lane, the main shopping street, has been designated a conservation area to protect heritage buildings from over-eager developers. The train station is getting a facelift and the zone around it upgraded, with a new town square created and derelict railway arches brought back into use as shops and business premises. Disused coal sidings are being transformed into an elevated "greenway", a 1km-long park terminating at Kirkwood Nature Reserve.

Peckham splits into three definable sub-areas: the northern patch around much-improved Burgess Park; the bustling town centre and the quieter and leafier southern section embracing Nunhead, Peckham Rye and the Bellenden conservation area.

Nunhead is worth exploring. Previously a sleepy community, mostly ignored except for its famous cemetery, it has now acquired "village" status, with independent baker, butcher, fishmonger, florist, deli and gastropub.

Nunhead Green, the hub, has been tidied up and a row of refurbished almshouses adds period charm. Remarkably, locals even have Aquarius Golf Club on their doorstep, a challenging nine-hole private course created on high land that is part of a Thames Water reservoir.

Architect-developer Solidspace has launched five custom-built houses on Blenheim Grove and says it is willing to work with self-builders who want to create a genuinely bespoke property.

The homes have been designed with double-height voids and splitlevel spaces that remove the need for hallways and allow rooms to borrow light and volume from each other. Call 020 7234 0222.