The nickname began as a joke, became a government policy and has outlived the roundabout it was named after
Whatever Happened to Silicon Roundabout? A Walk Around Old Street
The first thing to say about Silicon Roundabout is that there is no longer a roundabout. After years of roadworks that tested the patience of every cyclist, bus passenger and pedestrian in the district, the old gyratory at Old Street has been reshaped. One arm has been closed to traffic to form a public space, and there is a new entrance to the station. You can now walk to the middle without running for your life, which older residents regard as slightly unsporting.
The second thing to say is that the name was never official. It began as a joke, and its career since then is a neat lesson in how a neighbourhood gets branded, what happens when a government notices, and who is left when the attention moves on.
The Joke
In 2008 a software developer working near the junction posted a remark online observing that a number of web companies had settled around the Old Street roundabout, and dubbing it Silicon Roundabout. It was meant with the dry self-mockery typical of London. Nobody involved believed that a traffic island in the East End was a rival to California.
The companies were real, though. They had come for the reasons people have always come to Shoreditch. Space was cheap. Old warehouses and workshops made good open-plan offices. The City was a short walk in one direction and the bars were a short walk in the other. There was a ready supply of designers and artists who already lived nearby. A cluster formed without anybody planning it.
The Government Arrives
In 2010 the Prime Minister of the day, David Cameron, gave a speech announcing that the area would be promoted as East London Tech City. There would be support for investment, changes to visa and tax rules to favour entrepreneurs, and a link to the Olympic site at Stratford. Large technology firms were encouraged to open offices and training spaces. The initiatives are recorded in the archives on GOV.UK.
Opinions differ about how much difference this made. Supporters say the publicity put London on the map for international investors and that the tax reliefs for early-stage investment helped many young firms. Sceptics, among them some of the original founders, said the cluster was doing well already and that official attention chiefly served to push up the rent. A former warehouse that had been affordable for a company of five people became, within a few years, a prestige address.
The Rent, Again
This is the part of the story that anyone familiar with Shoreditch could have foretold. The artists had been priced out by the startups. The startups were then priced out in turn, by larger companies, by co-working operators who rented by the desk, and by developers who saw that land near Old Street could carry towers of flats and offices. Several tall buildings now stand around the junction where low brick blocks stood before.
Young companies moved outward to wherever was cheaper: north into Dalston and Haggerston, east to Hackney Wick, south of the river, and to other cities altogether. What stayed around Old Street tended to be the firms that had grown up or been bought, and the lawyers, investors and recruiters who serve them. The district became less of a nursery and more of a head office.
The Road Itself
The roundabout was a notorious place to cross, and it had a poor safety record for people on bicycles. The plan to rebuild it was drawn up by Transport for London together with the two boroughs that meet at the junction, Islington and Hackney. The north-western arm was closed to create a peninsula with a new station entrance, segregated cycle lanes and wider crossings.
The work ran for considerably longer than first announced, delayed by the pandemic and by the complications of digging around an Underground station and a tangle of buried cables and pipes. Local businesses complained bitterly about the hoardings. The finished junction is safer and easier to use. The old subway shops beneath the road, a peculiar underground arcade that once sold everything from keys to coffee to vintage records, have largely gone, and I do miss them.
What Is Left of the Idea
It would be wrong to write an obituary. London remains by most measures the largest centre for technology investment in Europe, and a great deal of that activity still happens within walking distance of Old Street. Financial technology in particular has flourished, helped by the nearness of the City and of the regulators. The universities and research institutes clustered a mile or so away at King’s Cross have added depth.
What has changed is the texture. The scruffy optimism of the early years, when a company might consist of three people and a borrowed sofa, is harder to find at these prices. The pubs where founders met investors over a pint are still there, though many have been done up. The sticker-covered laptops have been joined by lanyards.
A Familiar Cycle
I have come to think of this as the Shoreditch cycle. Somebody discovers that the neighbourhood is cheap and interesting. They make it more interesting. That makes it expensive. They leave, complaining, for somewhere cheaper, and the process starts again a mile to the east. It happened to the furniture makers, the printers, the artists and the coders. It is no doubt happening now to someone doing something I have not heard of yet.
The nickname, meanwhile, has proved more durable than the roundabout. It is on signs and in guidebooks. A name coined in jest is now used with a straight face by estate agents, which is perhaps the truest sign that an area has arrived, and that it is time for the interesting people to move on.
The technology scene has been a rich seam for my colleagues on the London satirical news and English satirical news desks, and The Daily Mash has enjoyed itself at the expense of the startup founder for years. The essay on what satirical commentary is, and what it is not explains the difference between their work and a report like this one. For the older speech of these streets, which predates the coders by some centuries, there is the guide to Cockney rhyming slang. More of my local reporting is on my author page at The London Prat.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/
