Another East London Startup Graduates to Glass Tower as Ditch Gentrification Continues its Arc
By Cyndi Himmelstiere | Ditch Pitch UK
A tech company that I will not name because they did not respond to my requests for comment has vacated its Shoreditch office and relocated to Canary Wharf, adding one more data point to the trajectory that Silicon Roundabout observers have been tracking for years: companies that start in Shoreditch when they are small and interesting relocate when they are large enough to afford the kind of glass tower that signals to clients that they are large and stable, which is a signal that Shoreditch cannot send because Shoreditch’s signal is that you are creative and startup-y and have a good coffee machine and exposed brickwork rather than HR departments and visitor management systems.
The Silicon Roundabout: Its Current State
Old Street Roundabout, which the media called Silicon Roundabout in approximately 2010 when it noticed that there were several technology companies in the vicinity, remains a technology cluster in the sense that technology companies continue to have offices here. The companies that are here are either small enough that Shoreditch works for them, specialised enough that proximity to the creative industries matters, or attached enough to their brand identity as Shoreditch companies that moving would cost more than the Canary Wharf rent savings justify. The companies that have outgrown Shoreditch in the past five years include several that were here when the Silicon Roundabout name was new and that have relocated with the specific nostalgia of successful alumni.
What Replaces Them
What replaces departing tech companies in Shoreditch is a mix: coworking spaces that serve the fragmented working patterns of post-pandemic professional life, studios for the creative and media sectors that are here because proximity to other creative and media people still matters, and the hospitality and retail that serves all of the above. The neighbourhood remains economically active and continues to attract exactly the kind of people who were attracted to it fifteen years ago, which are people who are doing interesting things and want to be around other people doing interesting things. The companies that leave are taking their interesting years with them. The neighbourhood continues producing new interesting things. This is how areas work when they are working, and Shoreditch is working.
Cyndi Himmelstiere has been writing about Shoreditch since before it was fashionable, and has continued writing about it through its fashionability, and is currently writing about it in the phase that follows fashionability, which is the phase where the things that were fashionable become normal and the things that were normal become expensive and the things that were authentic become self-consciously authentic, which is not the same thing but is sometimes harder to distinguish from the outside than it should be. She covers Shoreditch because it is where she lives and because the story it tells about urban change, creativity, and the economics of culture is worth telling with the specificity that only someone who has been here for the whole arc can provide. For Shoreditch events, see Time Out London. For East London community news, visit MyLondon. For Shoreditch arts and culture, see Evening Standard.
Shoreditch has been changing continuously since at least the 1990s, when artists arrived because the rents were low, and the changes have compounded in ways that make the current version of the neighbourhood look quite different from the version those artists found and yet feel continuous with it in some essential way that Cyndi Himmelstiere is still trying to articulate. The creativity is still here. The community is still here, in different proportions and different spaces than before. The things that made Shoreditch interesting to the first wave of arrivals are still visible if you know where to look, and they are being added to by new arrivals who find the same combination of qualities that made it worth finding in the first place. This is either gentrification’s failure to fully erase what it covers, or the resilience of urban culture in the face of economic pressure, or both, and Cyndi writes about it because the question of which it is matters for understanding cities.
Shoreditch has been changing continuously since at least the 1990s, when artists arrived because the rents were low, and the changes have compounded in ways that make the current version of the neighbourhood look quite different from the version those artists found and yet feel continuous with it in some essential way that Cyndi Himmelstiere is still trying to articulate. The creativity is still here. The community is still here, in different proportions and different spaces than before. The things that made Shoreditch interesting to the first wave of arrivals are still visible if you know where to look, and they are being added to by new arrivals who find the same combination of qualities that made it worth finding in the first place. This is either gentrification’s failure to fully erase what it covers, or the resilience of urban culture in the face of economic pressure, or both, and Cyndi writes about it because the question of which it is matters for understanding cities.
Shoreditch has been changing continuously since at least the 1990s, when artists arrived because the rents were low, and the changes have compounded in ways that make the current version of the neighbourhood look quite different from the version those artists found and yet feel continuous with it in some essential way that Cyndi Himmelstiere is still trying to articulate. The creativity is still here. The community is still here, in different proportions and different spaces than before. The things that made Shoreditch interesting to the first wave of arrivals are still visible if you know where to look, and they are being added to by new arrivals who find the same combination of qualities that made it worth finding in the first place. This is either gentrification’s failure to fully erase what it covers, or the resilience of urban culture in the face of economic pressure, or both, and Cyndi writes about it because the question of which it is matters for understanding cities.
