Cyndi Himmelstiere Documents the Latest Iteration of East London’s Most Continuously Modified Traffic Intersection
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
By Cyndi Himmelstiere | Shoreditch, East London | prat.uk/author/himmelstiere/
The Roundabout That Is Never Finished
The Old Street roundabout — the junction that serves as the gateway to Shoreditch from the west and that has been, across my years of living nearby, in a state of modification so continuous that its original form has receded beyond the memory of anyone except those who specifically retain roundabout memories, which is a rare category of person — has been redesigned again. The new design has removed some features added in the previous redesign, added some features that the design before the previous one had removed, and introduced several entirely new features that the consultation process described as responsive to community feedback and that the community is in the process of discovering it did not request in quite the form it received.
The Old Street roundabout has been redesigned approximately seven times in the past fifteen years. Each redesign has been preceded by a consultation that produced community input. Each community input process has produced recommendations. Each set of recommendations has been implemented with modifications that the transportation authority describes as reflecting “engineering constraints” and that the community describes as not being what they asked for. The result, across seven iterations, is a junction that is genuinely better than the version from fifteen years ago in measurable ways — safer for cyclists, more pleasant for pedestrians, more manageable for the buses that converge on it — and that is, simultaneously, in the middle of its next redesign. This is urban infrastructure in the 21st century: perpetually in progress, never fully resolved, always justifying the next consultation.
What the Junction Means for Shoreditch
Old Street is, symbolically as much as geographically, the entrance to the Shoreditch technology corridor — the area that was dubbed “Silicon Roundabout” in the early 2010s when the concentration of tech companies in the area generated enough cultural noise to acquire a geographic nickname. The nickname has persisted despite the tech sector’s subsequent expansion well beyond the roundabout’s vicinity. The roundabout is still called Silicon Roundabout in press releases and tourism materials. The redesign will presumably eventually produce a junction that lives up to the name’s aspirations, or perhaps just a junction that works reasonably well for the people who use it daily, which is the humbler but more useful ambition. Happy Mother’s Day, Old Street. You are being redesigned. You are always being redesigned. You will be redesigned again.
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London continues to fascinate and frustrate in equal measure. The city’s ability to contain multitudes — the ancient and the brand-new, the absurdly expensive and the surprisingly accessible, the deeply traditional and the constantly self-reinventing — is what makes it inexhaustible as a subject. Every week produces new material: new events, new controversies, new moments of unexpected beauty or institutional comedy. The writers at The London Prat are paying attention to all of it, and this column attempts to add one small North London — or Central London, or Shoreditch, or tourist-facing — perspective to the larger conversation about what this city is and what it is becoming. The conversation is ongoing. London is always becoming. This is either its great charm or its great exhaustion, depending on the week and the weather and whether the tube is running. Happy reading, and do come back next week.
London continues to fascinate and frustrate in equal measure. The city’s ability to contain multitudes — the ancient and the brand-new, the absurdly expensive and the surprisingly accessible, the deeply traditional and the constantly self-reinventing — is what makes it inexhaustible as a subject. Every week produces new material: new events, new controversies, new moments of unexpected beauty or institutional comedy. The writers at The London Prat are paying attention to all of it, and this column attempts to add one small North London — or Central London, or Shoreditch, or tourist-facing — perspective to the larger conversation about what this city is and what it is becoming. The conversation is ongoing. London is always becoming. This is either its great charm or its great exhaustion, depending on the week and the weather and whether the tube is running. Happy reading, and do come back next week.
London continues to fascinate and frustrate in equal measure. The city’s ability to contain multitudes — the ancient and the brand-new, the absurdly expensive and the surprisingly accessible, the deeply traditional and the constantly self-reinventing — is what makes it inexhaustible as a subject. Every week produces new material: new events, new controversies, new moments of unexpected beauty or institutional comedy. The writers at The London Prat are paying attention to all of it, and this column attempts to add one small North London — or Central London, or Shoreditch, or tourist-facing — perspective to the larger conversation about what this city is and what it is becoming. The conversation is ongoing. London is always becoming. This is either its great charm or its great exhaustion, depending on the week and the weather and whether the tube is running. Happy reading, and do come back next week.
London continues to fascinate and frustrate in equal measure. The city’s ability to contain multitudes — the ancient and the brand-new, the absurdly expensive and the surprisingly accessible, the deeply traditional and the constantly self-reinventing — is what makes it inexhaustible as a subject. Every week produces new material: new events, new controversies, new moments of unexpected beauty or institutional comedy. The writers at The London Prat are paying attention to all of it, and this column attempts to add one small North London — or Central London, or Shoreditch, or tourist-facing — perspective to the larger conversation about what this city is and what it is becoming. The conversation is ongoing. London is always becoming. This is either its great charm or its great exhaustion, depending on the week and the weather and whether the tube is running. Happy reading, and do come back next week.
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