Where is London heading?
I’ve just returned from a trip to London, my first since emigrating.
The overwhelming impression I got of the physical city was one in the midst of much rebuilding. On my first day there I took a look at the skyline from the top of Primrose Hill. The horizon was littered with cranes. Ordinarily I’d think that this regeneration was at least some indication of a GOOD THING happening: London is a living, breathing entity, so a refreshment of its innards would be a necessary and beneficial development. But then I took a few journeys into town and was surprised at the number of huge holes that had sprung up in areas that had shown little change since my childhood. The electronics shops that once gave Tottenham Court Road its identity have given way to a building site, as have the shops on the east side of Berwick Street Market. Apparently the entire market is going to disappear, as is the market at Shepherd’s Bush between Goldhawk Road and Uxbridge Road.
So what are all these pointless, unnecessary elements of the fabric of London going to be replaced by?
Housing. Lots and lots of housing. And that’s great, right? There’s a massive shortage of housing for London’s essential workers, and huge communities are being driven from London’s estates to towns and cities across the country. So now they’ll have somewhere to live in the capital, allowing them to contribute to the diverse combination of ethnicities and social demographics that has made London London for so many centuries.
Ha ha ha! Of course that’s not what’s happening. The housing is being built for rich people from abroad who want to buy London property as an apparently safe investment. Usually they leave these homes empty, decimating the communities in which they exist. If no one lives there, no one will use the shops that surround them, so no one can afford to serve those areas, leaving them as de facto ghost towns.
As I chatted to friends about this and wondered what would become of the London in which I’d spent the first forty years of my life, I found this article in The Observer (there’s another by Rafael Behr in the Observer magazine that I couldn’t find online). It expands on the above in a somewhat depressing fashion.
If London carries on this way it’s going to change beyond recognition, and not in a good way. When I left it wasn’t because of a dislike of what I thought London would become, but if I still lived there I’d think even more seriously about leaving, just to find something less expensive and less homogenised. For the price of my London flat I bought a home in LA that’s twice the size with a big garden and pool – and that’s in a nice area with a good school. When LA seems like a massive bargain in comparison, that’s when you have to wonder about London’s future.
Or come to LA!
Or both.
Come on, Ben. Berwick Street market is shit. Always has been.
I also slightly disbelieve all these stories about people buying houses and leaving them empty. Why would they forego such a huge amount of (rental) income? It don’t make no sense.
All right, Scampy, yes it is. And the market in Shepherd’s Bush is even worse, but they may not be for the likes of ‘us’ (smiley face made out of punctuation).
Isn’t a London with a bit of a shitty edge better than the one we’re heading for?
And I have no idea about this lack of rental income thing. You’re right that it don’t make no sense, but if you Google ‘flats left empty london’ you’ll find a lot of stuff that suggests it’s true.
And Google always directs you to facts, rather than stories about Johnny foreigners ruining our communities.
I got out this year for the exact reasons you mention.
London becoming a financial centre, as anyone can see – which it probably needs to be to sustain a UK which barely makes anything any more. It’s looks like it wants to follow Hong Kong’s example in the long term.
I’m not sure it would appeal to the metropolitan, public-school elite, but the creative industries should probably get out to Manchester, Bristol, Glasgow, Brighton and leave London to it.
If someone can win multiple Emmys about a show in Slough, then someone should be able to win Cannes from Cardiff.
For my part, getting out is the best move I ever made. I have a house with stairs and a garden – and with capital left over. I’m doing better work. I’m more relaxed.
I recommend it fully to anyone – though you will shit yourself horribly at first.
1 bedroom flats down the road from me near Aldgate going for half a million.
Take. A. Shit.
London’s finished.
I give it 20 years before London becomes the city in Judge dredd.
There aren’t enough bricks in the UK let alone bricklayers. If I was a young aspiring copywriter I’d say to myself “fuck advertising I’m going to learn to be a brickie and earn a fortune. At least building stuff is useful.”
Whatever helps you sit in traffic, bro.
Hey, bro – the traffic I encountered in the last few weeks in London was far, far worse than anything I come across in LA.
I took a cab from Holborn to St James’s Park and had to get out half way after sitting in a non-moving jam for fifteen minutes. The cabbie refused to take the full fare, but I gave it to him anyway.
M4 coming back into London on a Friday lunchtime: ten times worse than the 405.
Exit from The Mall to Trafalgar Square: suicide would be preferable.
And @ G-L: those articles (page 1 Google at least) come from The New Statesman, BBC, Guardian and Evening Standard; not exactly the usual suspects in Johnny Foreigner hate-mongering.
This is what comes with assuming that a free market in land and housing will make everything right in the end – clearly it doesn’t, partly because the free market is inherently selfish.
I agree with Anonymouse, time the creative industries escaped to interesting towns and cities that can better provide the people they need with a viable life.
Scamp and Ben.
Investors aren’t in it for the headaches of tennants and letting agency fees.
They in it for the 10-15% growth annually they get on their investment.
When the stock market gives you 4-5% on a good deal and you need to keep your money in for years and years for any real growth, London property is brilliant.
Invest £5m in January, sell in December and pocket £750k. No where else in the world can you get that return.
Without the hassle of some twat who needs a maintenance man to change the lightbulbs (my experience of renting out my flat).
To the guy who moved out of London because he wanted to have stairs.
Come on, mate. Stairs are shit. Complete waste of energy.
Imagine being young and living (renting) in London… christ.
And in case you think it’s about to taper off any time soon…there are over 135 tower blocks greenlit for development south of the river. Somewhere in the gap between the Thames and Croydon.
135.
Imagine how much that’s going to smash up the skyline….
I live in an apartment building in W8. It’s fully occupied. Except it isn’t, half the apartments sit empty except for a few weeks in the summer. Same with lots of other apartment buildings around here. I read recently that the classic French restaurant Racine on the Brompton Road closed, the owner blamed the fact that there were fewer residents actually living in that neighbourhood coming to his restaurant. It might have gone a bit shit too, but the point is valid. This is a real problem for London, the life and vibrancy and the creativity is being sucked out – just look at what’s happening to Soho – the creative industries are being driven east by landlords who know they’ll make a killing flogging residential.
Pretty soon, that’ll spread east too. LA is starting to sound pretty good right now.