A property company’s ranking, reported by Time Out on 13 September, puts the two boroughs that share Shoreditch at the top of the London street art table
Shoreditch has two councils and one reputation. The reputation is for walls, and a new ranking suggests it is deserved. According to Time Out’s report of 13 September 2026, a study by the property company Barratt London found that Tower Hamlets has the most street art in London, with 197 pieces, and Hackney the second most, with 106. Camden came third, followed by Lambeth, Waltham Forest, Southwark, Bromley, Westminster, Islington and Newham. The article gives no detail on how the artworks were counted, so the numbers should be read as one company’s tally, not a census.
Who Is Counting
That caveat matters, because a property company has an interest in the neighbourhoods it sells homes in, and street art is a selling point. A ranking of this kind is a piece of marketing as well as a study, and nothing in the report suggests the figures are wrong. They are, however, unaudited, and a reader who wants to rely on them should ask for the method. The study also compared Google searches for street art across boroughs, and Camden beat Tower Hamlets on searches by more than 13,000, a reminder that the number of works and the number of people looking for them are different things.
The Tower Hamlets Picture
The report ties Tower Hamlets to Banksy’s early works, though it says many have been removed, and says much of the remaining art is at the Truman Brewery, including a three-storey crane painting by ROA. The brewery is also the site of the planning decision covered in a separate report on the approval of offices and a data centre around Brick Lane, so the same walls that top the ranking sit in the middle of a dispute about the future of the area. The Time Out piece does not say what the redevelopment would mean for the art, and it would be wrong to guess.
Our guide to Shoreditch’s street art and five pound coffees gives the visitor’s view, which is that the art is the draw and the coffee is the price. The relationship between the two is the economy of the neighbourhood in a sentence.
The Hackney Picture
Hackney’s 106 pieces include, according to the report, the Hackney Peace Mural by Ray Walker, which is about 40 years old. The article credits Hackney Art Week, launched in 2025, with adding temporary street art installations. A forty-year-old mural and a week of temporary installations show two kinds of street art: the permanent civic kind that residents commissioned, and the passing kind that appears and is overwritten.
That difference matters for a count. A mural that has stood for forty years and a piece that lasts a fortnight both count as one. The ranking does not distinguish them, and a borough that replaces its walls often could score as high as one that preserves them. Our look at London street art as a gallery that changes every week makes the point with a light touch.
The Rest of the Table
The report offers a few other details. Lambeth, fourth, has about 300 metres of graffiti at the Leake Street Arches. Westminster, eighth, has 19 notable artworks despite regular cleaning. Those two facts show how differently boroughs treat their walls: Lambeth designates a tunnel where painting is encouraged, while Westminster cleans, and the count reflects the policy as much as the culture.
Banksy and the Market
Street art is also an asset class. A wall that carries a famous name can become worth more than the building it is on, a phenomenon our short report on Banksy and the wall that becomes a fortune overnight treats lightly. For a property company, that creates an obvious incentive to talk about street art: it signals a neighbourhood with character, and character sells homes. For the artists, the incentive is mixed. Work on a wall is free to see and free to remove, and the owner decides which.
The report does not discuss ownership, permission or removal, and those are the questions that decide how long a piece lasts. A work on a private wall can be painted over by the owner. A work on a council wall can be cleaned by the council. A work in a designated area can be overpainted by the next artist. In every case, a piece is as permanent as the person who controls the wall allows.
What the Ranking Does and Does Not Show
The ranking shows that East London has a large number of artworks, and that Tower Hamlets and Hackney lead. It does not show quality, age, legal status or visitor numbers. It does not show how the count was made. And it does not say whether the figures include works on the borders of the boroughs, which matters in Shoreditch, where the boundary runs through the middle of the scene.
A fair reading is that the ranking is a pleasant piece of local evidence that the area’s reputation is not exaggerated. A sceptical reading is that it is a promotional table. Both can be true.
For Visitors
For anyone who wants to see the art, the practical advice is to walk. The densest concentration is around Brick Lane and the streets north of it, with more along the canal and in the lanes of Hoxton. Go on a weekday morning if you want to see the walls without the crowds, and go back after a month, because some of what you saw will have changed. Respect the businesses whose walls you are photographing.
The art, like the neighbourhood, is always being rebuilt. That is the charm, and it is also the problem for anyone who tries to count it.
For more on Shoreditch and its neighbours, see our guide to London magazines and comment, and for the wider magazine visit Bohiney Magazine. If you want your art criticism lightened, The Daily Mash has been taking murals down a peg for years. In the meantime, the sensible conclusion is that East London has plenty of walls, and a great many opinions about them.
SOURCE: bohiney.com
