Crossrail Brought Whitechapel Station and Suddenly Liverpool Street Is Four Minutes Away and Everything Has Adjusted
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
The Elizabeth Line Effect on Shoreditch: Four Minutes to Liverpool Street Changes Everything
Liverpool Street to Whitechapel on the Elizabeth Line takes four minutes. This is not a long time. But four minutes is the difference between Shoreditch being “accessible” in the way that requires planning and Shoreditch being “accessible” in the way that is spontaneous. The people who would have chosen Clerkenwell or Farringdon because they are closer to the City are now looking at Shoreditch differently. The people who live in Shoreditch and were previously resigned to the Central line or the Overground now have a faster path to Paddington, Reading, and the whole western corridor of the Elizabeth Line’s reach.
The effect on property prices has been measured by estate agents who have been measuring it since the line opened. The effect on the neighbourhood’s character — on who is looking at properties, who is opening businesses, who is frequenting the coffee shops and the members’ clubs — is less precisely measured but visible to anyone paying attention over the past few years. Whitechapel has become noticeably more desirable since the Elizabeth Line. The areas between Whitechapel and Shoreditch proper have become the zone that developers describe as “emerging” and that residents describe as “changing more than we expected.”
The Unintended Consequences
Public transport improvements are supposed to produce benefits that are broadly shared: reduced journey times, lower transport costs, better connectivity. They also produce property value increases that are captured by property owners rather than by the tenants and workers who use the improved transit. The Elizabeth Line has made East London more accessible to everyone who uses it. It has also made East London more expensive, because improved accessibility increases demand from higher-income households that can now reach the area more easily from the west.
This is the transit-gentrification link that urbanists have documented in cities from San Francisco to London: infrastructure investment that improves a neighbourhood’s connectivity also increases its land value, which prices out the lower-income residents who benefit from the connectivity. Managing the distributional consequences of transit investment requires policies — inclusionary zoning, social housing, tenant protections — that the current framework provides inadequately. The tube workers who maintain the infrastructure cannot afford to live in the neighbourhoods their infrastructure serves. The Elizabeth Line is excellent. Four minutes to Liverpool Street is transformative. The rents in Whitechapel have moved accordingly. The transformation continues.
