Squeezed between some of London’s poorest streets and its richest square mile, the neighbourhood has always been a crossroads, and the traffic is running one way
Gentrification in Shoreditch: A Neighbourhood at a Crossroads
I should declare an interest. I am the kind of person who gets blamed for what has happened to Shoreditch. I moved here because it was interesting and I could afford it. Now it is interesting and I can barely afford it, and the people who were here before me can afford it less.
So I write about gentrification from inside the glass house.
The Geography
A local newspaper report from 2021 described the position well. wedged between very poor parts of Tower Hamlets and the financial district, it said, the neighbourhood has become a meeting point of two economies. Rapid change has alarmed many from the area, the paper noted, but has brought economic benefits too.
You can see it in a ten-minute walk. Start at Liverpool Street among the glass towers. Go north-east. Within a few hundred yards you are on Brick Lane, among sari shops and sweet centres. Go a little further and you are on council estates where child poverty rates are among the highest in the country.
Banglatown
The southern end of Brick Lane has been the centre of London’s Bangladeshi community since the 1970s. The same report recalls that these communities gradually earned the street the nickname “Banglatown.” It quoted a local artist, born in the area, who said the change had come very quickly, and that streets like Brick Lane matter culturally and have long given East Enders, migrants especially, “a leg up” into the city.
That phrase has stayed with me. A leg up. The street was a place where a family could start a restaurant or a shop with little capital, employ relatives, and build something.
The curry houses that made the lane famous have been closing for years. The reasons are several: rising rents, changing tastes, difficulty recruiting chefs, the next generation choosing other careers. What replaces them is often a bar or a vintage shop aimed at visitors.
Before That
It helps to remember that the Bangladeshi community was itself the latest arrival. The building on the corner of Fournier Street has been a Huguenot chapel, a synagogue and is now a mosque. Each wave moved on as it prospered. The difference this time, critics say, is that people are not moving on because they have prospered. They are being priced out.
The Flashpoints
The argument has crystallised around particular sites. The Truman Brewery is the main one. As Time Out reported in January, the campaign group Save Brick Lane has been fighting redevelopment there since 2020, and the latest proposals include a data centre along with flats and shops. The council refused permission and the decision was then called in by the government.
The 2021 report describes earlier protests against plans for a shopping centre and offices on part of the site, noting that the brewery offers low rent to market stalls and restaurants and hosts community events.
The fear is not about one building. It is that the brewery’s cheap, flexible space is what remains of the old economy of the street, and that once it goes, the rest follows.
The Benefits
I said I would write from the glass house, so let me be honest about the other side.
Shoreditch thirty years ago was not a paradise. Much of it was derelict. There were few jobs. The technology and creative businesses that moved in brought employment and money. Crime fell. Buildings were repaired. Property owners in the area, including long-standing local families, did well.
The bars and restaurants employ thousands. The night-time economy is one of the borough’s largest sources of work.
And change is not something outsiders do to a passive community. Many of the new businesses are run by people who grew up here.
Who Loses
The benefits and costs do not fall on the same people. If you own, rising values are a windfall. If you rent, they are a threat. If you run a business with a long lease, you are fine until it ends.
The people most exposed are private tenants, small traders on short leases, and the young adults of local families who cannot afford to live near their parents. Social housing tenants are protected from rent rises but watch the shops and services around them change into things that are not for them.
What Might Help
There is no cure. There are measures that take the edge off.
Affordable workspace secured through planning, as has been promised at the Goodsyard, so that small businesses have somewhere to go.
Protection for particular uses. Councils can designate areas for specific kinds of business, though the tools are blunt.
Genuinely affordable housing, at social rents, not merely discounted market ones.
Community ownership. Where local groups own buildings, they control the rents.
None of this stops change. It decides who gets to stay for it.
Where I Have Ended Up
I do not think those of us who arrived later should flagellate ourselves, or pretend we are not part of it. I think we should know the history, shop at the places we would miss, turn up at the planning meetings, and not complain when the street is noisy on a Friday.
The crossroads is still a crossroads. The question, as it has been for three hundred years, is who gets to stop here and who is only passing through.
For a Change of Tone
The newcomers to east London have been satirised mercilessly, often deservedly. The London Prat joins in with its UK satirical news on gentrification and British satirical news about hipsters. My running log of the neighbourhood is there too. Bohiney Magazine covers Brooklyn’s version.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
