London's skyline is a growing mess (Commentary)

[10023]

But were areas like Kensington and Chelsea ever that mixed income-wise? If you have evidence of this, I'd love to see it, but those terrace houses were built for the rich and are currently occupied by the rich.

$170k is a pittance for housing nowadays almost anywhere. It's called inflation.

[muppet]

^actually yes. Those areas were definitely upmarket all their existence, but you could still get council houses there. In the mid noughties I worked with a Ugandan kid from a huge family who lived in a council house. They moved from a 5 bedroom in Notting Hill to a 7 bedroom in Chelsea, thanks to contacts in the council methinks.

My best mate used to live in his girlfriends house, inherited off her mother who was in council accommodation, a vast 3 bed apartment over 3 floors in a beautiful, 150 year old Notting Hill terrace (it was however completely dingy inside). She was desperately trying to save enough/ sub let it out to buy it off the housing association. I myself lived in an ex council flat (Purbrook Estate), about 200metres from Tower Bridge, in 2000-2002.

Then:



now:




And as I mentioned before about inflation, average house prices have gone up by $170,000 in a decade (in September 2013 they rose a whopping $85,000 in that month) but the average wage by only $11,000. One needs to earn $70,000 a year to buy, and to do it in a couple.

[muppet]

Another example - now full of millionaire's the World's End estate, Chelsea is one such example of flats built for council housing, in the heart of a millionaire's district, a mix
typical of London -back in the day



Likewise the once infamous, now celebrated Trellick tower in Notting Hill, solely council housing until the 1990s



Peabody Estates (poor rundown social housing from Edwardian times that resemble prisons, now being converted) are also near very upmarket areas, for example next to Tower
Bridge, Pimlico, Clerkenwell.



Likewise Michael Cliffe House - during the early 00s this council building ended up standing on the most expensive land prices in the world (the ex-industrial Clerkenwell)



Kensington



Fitzrovia



even on Portobello Rd (see ex council flats on left)



Golden Lane Estate, the first housing allowed in the Financial District was social housing. Apartments in the second tower block behind go for $3.5 million a pop.



Regents Park estate, not far from Billionaire's Row in one direction, and the most expensive properties in the world in the other (if ever they come onto the market, in 2007
one rowhome on Carlton Terrace was offered for $350 million but refused).



Carlton Terrace rowhomes (every 5 windows along is a new house).



Soho





Sandringham Buildings, Piccadilly (one of my workmates aunties lived in here - they were tiny inside, with dingy stairwells despite the location 200m from Trafalgar Square)



The Comyn Ching triangle, Covent Garden (a notoriously squalid block converted to offices in one of the first private regeneration programmes)



more



The most famous example is The Oxo Tower refurb, some of the penthouses went for free to council families (worth $8 million). 28 of the 78 apartments are still reserved for
some very lucky council housing (but most controversially Mick Jagger's daughter -worth $200 million - managed to get herself 'housed' there for $200 a week through the
housing association):



another example is the luxury SACO development on the riverbank, the bottom floors contain council housing but not many people know it




The best example is St John's Wood, one of the most expensive areas in the world

a rowhome here goes for $62 million



- but only from the air do you realise the amount of tower blocks and tenements mixed in:








^of course almost everything you see in this post above has in the last 5 years been turned over to the rich.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

[10023]

Once again you've outdone yourself with an entirely unnecessary number of photos. It's quite a pain for those of us who mostly post from our phones.

Yes, I get that there's council housing in RBKC. There still is. There's some form of public or subsidized housing in most expensive cities, including plenty of Section 8 in the desirable parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn.

I'm talking about market rate housing that constitutes the bulk of the housing stock. Chelsea has always been an affluent part of London. So has Kensington. That's clear from the housing stock. The people that have been affected by skyrocketing house prices in these areas are not those on average incomes, it's younger professionals like myself. Where my father and uncles could buy their first houses in W11 and SW7, our generation is competing with stupid money from the Mideast and elsewhere, so places that would cost £1 million or so (with normal inflation) now cost £4-5 million.

There's some trickle down effect as you move to other areas (Fulham, West Kensington, the Bush, etc) that were once more affordable, but prices in prime central London really have nothing to do with middle income people who haven't lived there for generations.

[chris08876]

I love the street layouts of London. Looks so complex, yet so beautiful. I must say, there is a sort of chaotic beauty to a non-grid system.

[10023]

London's street system is actually quite logical when you get used to it. There are big, mostly straight roads between areas/neighborhoods. For instance, Mayfair is bounded by Oxford Street to the north, Regent Street to the east, Picadilly to the south and Park Lane to the west. These are all major roads with multiple lanes and two-way traffic, which connect with other roads (ie, Oxford St becomes Bayswater Rd west of Marble Arch, Picadilly becomes Knightsbridge west of Hyde Park Corner).

It's only within a district of the city that the streets become short or narrow or less interconnected. But this contributes to a neighborhood feel, and quiet and walkability by limiting vehicular traffic. You don't have bumper to bumper traffic on every street in central London, because only some are useful for driving across town, so the others are quiet.

Take the area south of Brompton Road for example. Brompton Road itself is noisy, crowded with tourists, and full of crap chain restaurants and chain stores (plus of course Harrod's). Just a couple hundred yards south (if that), Walton Street and the streets that run south from it are some of the nicest in London. Walton St and Pont St have nice shopping and good neighborhood restaurants. That's possible because the streets that run south from Brompton Rd toward it (eg, Egerton Terrace, Yeoman's Row) dead end before reaching Walton St. That separation allows you to have a quiet residential neighborhood so close to a tourist street, because the tourists (and suburbanites or other visitors) can't find it.

It also means that the major roads tend to lead somewhere important. In Manhattan it's very easy to find your way from, say, 7th Ave and 13th St to 3rd Ave and 46th. You would need to have some serious mental limitations to not figure that out. But if you don't know you need to go to 3rd and 46th, and you're just exploring, you can walk up 3rd Ave for miles and not find anything interesting (or even a subway stop). In London, once you're on a "big road", you're walking from point to point (eg, Picadilly Circus to Oxford Circus to Marble Arch to Notting Hill Gate, etc. You only have to know the big roads, not every neighborhood street (except where you live or work), unless you're a cab driver. Basically, the "chaos" has advantage when it's your turf... it's only a disadvantage when it's not.

[muppet]

Originally Posted by 10023

Once again you've outdone yourself with an entirely unnecessary number of photos. It's quite a pain for those of us who mostly post from our phones.

Yes, I get that there's council housing in RBKC. There still is. There's some form of public or subsidized housing in most expensive cities, including plenty of Section 8 in the desirable parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn.

I'm talking about market rate housing that constitutes the bulk of the housing stock. Chelsea has always been an affluent part of London. So has Kensington. That's clear from the housing stock. The people that have been affected by skyrocketing house prices in these areas are not those on average incomes, it's younger professionals like myself. Where my father and uncles could buy their first houses in W11 and SW7, our generation is competing with stupid money from the Mideast and elsewhere, so places that would cost £1 million or so (with normal inflation) now cost £4-5 million.

There's some trickle down effect as you move to other areas (Fulham, West Kensington, the Bush, etc) that were once more affordable, but prices in prime central London really have nothing to do with middle income people who haven't lived there for generations.

I agree with you that the young are completely priced out, but I think the middle classes are too, increasingly. Many of London's middle class who own a home aren't complaining as it's their property prices that are turning huge profits (until they realise their kids won't be able to afford what theyve got), but the middle classes moving in aren't able to - $770,000 for an average house price is not great, with the average deposit alone expected to hit $170,000 within 6 years, for a first time buyer. One needs a yearly salary of around $100K to afford your average first home here.

Almost none of the council housing from the nineties or noughties remain in the centre, although each borough provides, they now only do so to their outskirts (although even these places often top $3.4 million in value as seen in the ensuing media scandal that these places are being given out to 'benefit scroungers' with huge families).

Almost all of the social housing in the centre sold out in the previous bubble, and have been converted to swanky flats- despite the fact they still look like crap on the outside (although a few die-hard working class stalwarts remain, although theyre missing quite a buck). To combat this new schemes are being put in place where tenants have to sell on at the same inflation-only adjusted value, regardless of property booms, but still the majority of London's poor are now being relegated further and further afield, very alike to a traditional Third World city of class segregation, where the rich dominate the centre, the middle classes the inner suburban ring, and the poor the rings out after that. This has detrimental effects across the board, notably in widening the income gap, increasing crime and entrenching poverty.

Look at the controversial redevelopment of notorious estates and areas like Elephant& Castle or the Heygate Estate - the postwar crap torn down and replaced with dense housing and the original tenants paid off multiple times what they originally paid for those crappy flats. However look closer and youll realise why so many of them try and stay on, protest the plans and refuse the builders - their compensation looks profitable on paper, but the fact remains they can only afford the very outskirts of town with that money. In effect supplanted from a fairly central 3 bed apartment to a studio 15 miles further out.

Article here, middle class professionals squeezed out as average asking price for a home in London hits $910,000

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/n...City-boom.html

Emergence of the middle class 'cling-ons'

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0664615a-9...#axzz31Q0pSWb2

[10023]

Originally Posted by muppet

I agree with you that the young are completely priced out, but I think the middle classes are too, increasingly. Many of London's middle class who own a home aren't complaining as it's their property prices that are turning huge profits (until they realise their kids won't be able to afford what theyve got), but the middle classes moving in aren't able to - $770,000 for an average house price is not great, with the average deposit alone expected to hit $170,000 within 6 years, for a first time buyer. One needs a yearly salary of around $100K to afford your average first home here.

And? There are quite a lot of people who earn $100K in London, and that is a middle class income (presuming you mean $100K and not £100K, and perhaps even if you do mean the latter). That is not shocking nor does it portend a problem for central London. When I say "younger professionals", I'm referring to people who can actually afford to spend $800K on a flat with a mortgage. The problem is when average house prices in a neighborhood are more like £4+ million, and there's no such thing as a deposit because sellers will only take payment in cash. That and the absentee landlords that are turning parts of London into ghost towns... a neighborhood full of super-rich residents is fine as long as it's actually full (though in the case of the Arab rich, I'm not sure it's better when they are there).

Originally Posted by muppet

Almost none of the council housing from the nineties or noughties remain in the centre, although each borough provides, they now only do so to their outskirts (although even these places often top $3.4 million in value as seen in the ensuing media scandal that these places are being given out to 'benefit scroungers' with huge families).

But the council housing is largely a post-war (WWI and especially after WWII) aberration. There was only council housing at the bottom of the King's Road because World's End was bombed badly during the Blitz. The fact that it's now rather expensive private housing again is just bringing things back to the way it was.

Not to mention that most of that council housing is a scar on the fabric of the city, and outside of the most central parts of London (where it cannot be avoided), the nicer places to live are partly defined by its absence. E.g., there's a reason that the area between Clapham Common and Wandsworth Common and around Battersea Rise is one of the nicer areas south of the river. Frankly if London is going to get denser, better it come from very expensive market rate apartment towers than more of the crap that was built in the 1960s.

[muppet]

it's just a shame that the council housing that used to be in the posh houses (not just postwar highrises) has all gone too. This is what used to make London so dynamic, where rich kids could grow up with poor kids and vice versa, and the ethnicities so openly mixing. Im not talking like Tarquin hanging out with Boyz n the Hood exactly, but the little stories, like one of my colleagues who was bought up a street away from the celebs, but whose best mate and neighbour is a son of Somali immigrants. I think we'll be seeing less and less of that the way things have become. In short London's losing it's uniqueness.

[10023]

My point is that I suspect all of that was a bit of an aberration caused by the upheaval of the 20th century (in that sense it's not unlike Piketty's view of economic inequality in general). The Victorians wouldn't have mixed so much.

And that's not what I think is so unique about London, actually. New York and lots of other cities are mixed like that. What's unique about London is that outside of the most central neighborhoods, it's basically a constellation of villages. Postwar social housing didn't exactly help to enhance that quality.

[muppet]

The Victorian's didnt mix AT ALL, but residentially they would plonk their new developments in salubrious dictricts, such as Soho, Notting Hill, Marylebone, Kings Cross etc. In effect posh streets but turn a few corners and youd be in workaday alleys and tenements. What happened in the 20th century was people began harking after gardens and open spaces, so suburbia was invented, with much of the gentry heading out. The grand old townhouses emptied and were more profitably turned over to bedsits despite hangers on. All the areas previously mentioned became slums in the postwar years and 80s, but were transformed back again to the staid, millionaire's ghettoes today. These were the glory years of class mixing, what now seems to have been an interlude reaching its apogee at the turn of the millennium.

Notting Hill, hard times and good - grand houses that became one of the city's most notorious, riot-happy places, then it's most hip and boho in the 90s, and now its millionaire's playground today.

[10023]

I live in a millionaire's playground, interesting. That was a lot of text to say "I agree with you".

[lio45]

FWIW, those of us not that familiar with London enjoy the information contained in the much wordier version of the "I agree with you".

[muppet]

youre very odd 10023.

If youre in Notting Hill, then YES

[muppet]

The way London mixed in the postwar years to about 2008 was that you could walk up to an ugly concrete highrise, and in amongst the poor families were middle class colonisers, and some very deluxe interiors, increasing in numbers every year to become majorities today. Likewise you could walk down a row of fine mansion terraces, and find some properties given over to multiple bedsits and social housing, sometimes whole streets. This decreased in numbers every year as people sold on at huge profits and the gentry reclaimed their original stamping grounds. The tipping point wasn't long ago, around early to mid noughties.

Back in that period it wasn't so much that the classes were mixing neighbourhoods (eg tower blocks rising above mansion terraces, or Victorian estates set in terraced slums), but mixing within buildings that marked it out. It was a great recipe for crime, income gaps, but also increased upward mobility, creativity and crossing class lines - unheard of in traditional British culture. The working classes were given access to middle class markets in education, businesses, and partners and would move up within one or two generations, only to be replaced by a new lot arriving. This is a prime reason why the 'Cool Britannia' label came about as the city became the centre of the global art, music, street fashion and youth culture for 25 years, and why immigrant minorities did so well.

examples:

upper middle class tower block

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=no...=isch&imgdii=_


FOB immigrant hostels/ 'poorhouse' council accommodation/ red light district/ student area back in the day:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=pa...stels&tbm=isch


Now all this looks gone to history methinks, priced out .

[10023]

Originally Posted by muppet

youre very odd 10023.

If youre in Notting Hill, then YES

That's funny, because every time I go out up in NH Village (Ken Park Rd or Portobello near Elgin Crescent) there are tons of young people who live locally. They're successful young people, but it's not a millionaires' ghetto.

[muppet]

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-pri...ting-Hill.html

"Notting Hill, with an overall average price of £1,413,876" ($2.4 million).
The average asking price for the W11 postcode is £2,677,742 ($4.53 million)

The majority of properties are flats too.

Average price of a property on Elgin Crescent is £2,920,810 ($4.93 million)

Portobello Rd £1,518,842 ($2.57 million)

Kensington Park Road is £1,783,662 ($3 million)

http://www.zoopla.co.uk/property

[10023]

Yes, to buy a place. And yet 73% of the population is lower middle class or working class...

http://www.postcodearea.co.uk/postal.../demographics/

[muppet]

^yes, but not in the terms of how we normally describe lower middle class and working class.

That I really can't believe considering it's one of the most chichi places in the city, so looked into it. Findings:

1. Note the complete absence of any upper class in the stats. The 'upper class' is automatically considered the country's top 1-2% (read: multi-millionaires and billionaires). Therefore everything is only upper middle, lower middle, skilled working or working class.

2. The stats are based on occupation rendered in the census, not income, or assets. In other words if you're not upper management but instead - a district manager in HSBC, a lawyer or a stockbroker etc even on a 6 figure salary you fall into middle or lower middle class. If you're a landlord / trophy wife/ one of the Notting Hill rich kids who have no job whatsoever (or do a menial dayjob) you fall into the working classes or long term unemployed.

3. The ONS used a market research company to produce a computerised paradigm to come up with those 'estimates'.

4. W11 also includes Ladbroke Grove, where there is social housing still.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRS_social_grade

At the end of the day the average house prices are $2.4 million, and average rental prices are £855 ($1443) a week for a house and £535 ($903) for a flat. The average 1 bed flat comes in at £743,496, or $1.25 million.

http://www.foxtons.co.uk/living-in/n...-hill/rentals/

[10023]

Well, social class is about more than income. If you mean middle income then say "middle income".

Anyway, I'm well aware of average rental prices in the area. There are still lots of young people. The average flat is £535/week but there are plenty of studio/1BR places for £400 or less, and of course if you share a 2-bedroom that costs £600-650 with a flatmate that's less. It's not cheap, but there are plenty of Londoners in their 20s who can afford these prices.

And Notting Hill is still less uniformly affluent than some other parts of London. For starters, there's a lot more council housing once you get up to Talbot Road / Blenheim Crescent. The part on the hill itself (with the big garden squares) and around Westbourne Grove is very nice, but it's not as nice when you get up toward Ladbroke Grove tube.