Giles Coren is wrong. To measure the desirability of an area by the opening of an expensive chain restaurant is to miss what makes a neighbourhood beautiful.
Kentish Town has never been a “shithole” and has always been a healthy mix of working-class and middle-class residents. The area had wealthy people living here twenty years ago – and has plenty of poor people living here today. This genuine diversity is what makes K-Town attractive and exciting; and I believe the Soho House venture on Highgate Road represents precisely the opposite of this.
You can hang out in, say, Pizza East and easily fool yourself you’re in Hampstead, Richmond, Chelsea or anywhere. Is the cultural heritage and thriving vitality of the neighbourhood beyond their doors respected? Are the communities catered for, cared for?
However, Giles Coren is right that there have been demographic changes in Kentish Town in the last two decades. Political and economic movements since the 1980s have led to rapid gentrification. On the political side, Thatcher’s right-to-buy policy followed by New Labour’s failure to build enough new council housing, led to a severe housing shortage for the low-paid and unemployed. The coalition government is completing this purge of the poor from inner-London with a cap on housing benefit which is forcing 2,816 people to leave Camden, the borough where many of them were born and have established lives.
On the economic side, an unsustainable housing bubble – the same one which caused the global financial crisis in the US – has driven house prices in central London up to phenomenal heights, making the concept of owning your own home out of reach to anyone but those with inheritance or bankers’ salaries.
In spite of these pressures from above, Kentish Town has thankfully not become a sterile village. Why? The same reason that Camden produces the best state schools in the country: the people who live here are well-integrated, open-minded, big-hearted and recognise the strength of cohesive, unified community. Alongside gentrification, Kentish Town has nurtured its unique charm and warm authenticity.
Gastro-fied boozers such as The Abbey, Junction Tavern and Dartmouth Arms still have the same crowd drinking there as when I was a child. The sadly-closed Map Café served up poetry readings from locals with affordable grub and a hip-hop radio station operating upstairs. The delicious food at Guanabana comes from the same owners as Bintang which has been in Kentish Town for decades. The area is full of options for good food in pleasant surroundings offered by local businesses catering for a diverse clientele.
As individuals, there isn’t that much we can do about rising house prices and the decisions of politicians. We can, however, choose where we eat, relax and who we surround ourselves with. Where we put our money determines what is valued in our community.
My 25 years living in NW5 – born and brought up in Queen’s Crescent, attending Gospel Oak primary and Parliament Hill school – have been marked by house burglaries, fights and stabbings, but, more importantly, by making friends from all walks of life, witnessing strangers help each other and being part of a community which pulls together in the aftermath of tragedy.
This openness and togetherness is Kentish Town’s real strength and it has nothing to do with hipster burgers, pricey pizzas or companies owned by billionaires.
Laura Murray has worked for the Greater London Authority since 2006, including doing PR for the Mayor of London, and is currently in a policy role for the London Assembly.
39 thoughts on “‘Giles Coren is wrong’”
Absolutely spot on
That idiot of a man,giles coran got the statement about the vine being a loyalist bomb factory totally wrong, i think this idiot should explain himself in person to the man who was in charge then ! That man was me and if i meet this clown in kentish town he better explain this untrue slur on myself and my family,yours the old Scottish landlord
He comes from cricklewood and called Kentish town a shit hole, giles wake up man
I think this is a great article but aren’t Soho House and the like of, the result rather than the cause? Businesses like that don’t move to an area with a view to change it, they come because they identify there’s an existing demand.
That’s Laura’s point isn’t it? And demonstrates why Giles Coren was wrong
I don’t see why it’s a problem that there are fewer council houses and people living on housing benefit here than there used to be. Why should my taxes go to subsidise someone on housing benefit living here when I can just about manage it after 20 years of slogging my guts out to do well at school, university, and in my career to earn a half-decent income? And even worse, why should my working friends who can’t afford to buy here but don’t have access to council houses, housing benefit etc have to subside someone else to live in the area they’d give their right arm to live in?
There are lots of inexpensive areas around London and elsewhere in the UK. If people can’t afford to live here, they should move to one of them – just like we used to do for hundreds of years before the state went a bit mental between 1950 and 1979 and decided to spend its cash building houses instead of providing services.
As for ‘sterility’ – I have no idea what this means, but in this case it sounds like it’s being used as a synonym for ‘not depressingly shit’. Plus I’ve never understood why a Pizza Express, Pret a Manger or Soho House joint is seen as greater evidence of sterility than the presence of Iceland, Greggs, and Pound Shops.
Hi Julia,
As admirable as it is that you have done well enough in school, university and your career to earn a decent income, this unfortunately is not the case for many people, through no fault of their own. The reason why we have a welfare system is because we need people to do the lowest paid jobs in society but we also need those people to survive and have homes to live in (otherwise they won’t be able to do those low paid jobs).
93% of new people who claimed housing benefit in the last 2 years are in work. They are hard-working and decent people who don’t deserve yours, or anyone else’, contempt just because they are poor. Sending all those people off to live outside of London (as the only councils who will even think of accepting more residents are out of London) is sending them away from their jobs or the possibility of jobs. Ousting poor people from London automatically makes them poorer as all the jobs are in London.
Also, just because you are one of the luckier people in the world to earn a good wage, it doesn’t and shouldn’t give you more automatic rights to an area or community than someone who may not earn a good wage but who was born and raised there, with their parents, grandparents and so on living there before them. Why is it only money that should be a deciding factor in who should get to stay in a community? Do history and friends and family and contribution to the community not matter at all? Why does income decide everything? Is this not a skewed value system?
I don’t particularly like Iceland or Greggs which is why I didn’t mention them in the article (see the examples I did use of affordable local businesses) but I do believe that in a mixed community, for every Sainsburys and Earth Natural Foods, you need an Iceland or some affordable equivalent. And the same for bakeries etc.
Last, but by far most importantly, if housing policy was to be dictated along the line you seem to favour (if you can’t afford the crazy house prices here, you shouldn’t be here) then Kentish Town and most areas would become instantly boring, suburban, silent and only representative of one side of life (the rich side). Most people don’t move to Kentish Town for that type of experience and the question could be asked of you – if that’s what you want, why shouldn’t you move to Richmond or Barnet? And leave the people who do appreciate diversity in Kentish Town?
All the best
I appreciate that you took the time to respond, Laura. But most of what you’ve written in reply is pretty woolly I’m afraid – a little more rigour needed in your thinking and perhaps a better grounding in economics would be useful.
I guess my main point is this: you use the word ‘lucky’ or ‘luckier’ a lot, as if I were some bozo who fortuitously won the lottery of life. But I am not ‘lucky’ to be able to live in Kentish Town. I am ‘enterprising’, ‘diligent’ and ‘hard-working’. The sterile middle classes that you think are turning KT into a boring village are people who, early in their lives, saw that the life they wanted would cost money and deliberately set out to educate themselves and work hard in order to get to a position where they could earn enough to achieve that life.
In my case I had to make many sacrifices to do so, including leaving my family and friends hundreds of miles away; spending many fewer hours enjoying the company of my wife or new friends in London than I would like; and miss out on many of the most exciting aspects of living in a world city like London, including bars, clubs, theatres, art shows etc. It therefore angers me – and people like me – when others who haven’t made those sacrifices (or who have, but haven’t been as enterprising as their peers in doing so) make a claim to live in nice areas through birthright or on the basis that such areas require a significant population of less well-off folks to avoid ‘sterility’. Can you see how that would be enraging? Can you see how that would deter people from working hard and trying to better themselves to achieve the lives they aspire to?
You stated in your original article it makes no sense for people to leave as “all the jobs are in London”. In fact there are many, many more jobs outside London than in London. There are many cheaper houses in far more beautiful locations outside London than in it. They are cheaper there than here because lots of people want to live in London because, well, London is London. If you want to be one of those people, you need to pay the price of admission; you can’t sneak in because you were the lucky sperm who got born here. Go and explore Manchester, or Glasgow, or Newcastle, or Aberdeen. They’re lovely places and there are some great jobs there: and once you’ve built a life, see how you feel about people demanding to live on the cheap in the area you’ve settled in to, simply because they were born there.
P.S. Even if I wanted to live in Richmond or Kingston – which I don’t – I can’t afford it. But at least I recognise that if I did want to live there, I’d have to work harder and find ways of making more money to get there. Just like I had to do to get into Kentish Town, in fact.
Hi Julian(?) – apologies for calling you Julia!,
Firstly, I very much appreciate you putting your view across and understand where you’re coming from, given the background of hard-work and sacrifice which you say you’ve had. You said nothing in your response to me to prove that my thinking is not rigorous or that my understanding of economics is faulty (in fact, I would like to see where you think I’m going wrong in my economic understanding).
I am sorry that you think I was portraying you as a “bozo” as I certainly didn’t mean to. When I use the word luck, I’m not implying that you don’t work hard or deserve good fortune, I am referring to the fact that those of us who are well-off in life ARE lucky – that luck coming in many, many different forms. You may be born to poor parents but be lucky that they are well-read and encourage you in your education. You may be born ugly but be lucky that you’re naturally intelligent. You may have the luck of having a neighbour or teacher or someone who is very supportive of you in life. Or you may have less luck and grow up without role models, academic support or financial stability. Do you see what I’m saying?
I have no doubt that you are ‘enterprising’, ‘diligent’ and ‘hard-working’ and also intelligent and well-educated from the sound of it. You should count your lucky stars for those traits everyday. But know this, that does not make you better or more worthy than any poor person. Many, many people from poorer sections of society are ‘diligent’ and ‘hard-working’ but remain in low-paid jobs throughout their lives. This is because we live in a system that necessitates that there are people in low-paid employment. It is necessary for our society to function that we have a class of low-paid people in low-skilled jobs. People do not dream of earning minimum-wage or aspire to one day be on zero-hour contracts in casual unskilled work. People do those jobs because they must. Because, although social mobility is sometimes possible, sadly too many people are unable to climb the socio-economic ladder due to a mixture of badly-funded public services, lack of role models, a society which values material gain over self-betterment and easy access to crime (to name but a few of the reasons!)
You seem like somebody who values the idea of social mobility – the idea that someone can lift themselves up and out of an unfortunate starting point in life. Kentish Town is one of those places that makes social mobility happen. That is why in my article I mentioned Kentish Town having the best state schools in the country. When middle-class parents send their children to state schools in Camden, the academic aspirations of working-class kids are automatically raised and the proof is in the grades these schools achieve (I can prove this if you like). If you send all the poor kids – who are poor through no choice of their own (even you must agree with that!) – out of London, you are reducing their chances of bettering their economic position in life. And you are narrowing the world outlooks of all children, rich and poor. Most kids do not wish to be segregated according to their parent’s incomes and when they are (like in private schools such as Eton), they come out the other end with very skewed perspectives of the world!
I think the reason me and you will probably never see eye-to-eye on this issue is that you seem to think and view the world very much in terms of “you”, “your” experiences, “your” sacrifices and I’m much more keen to view the world and Kentish Town in terms of “us”, how “we” can help each other and how “we” can benefit from each other. But I really appreciate your comments, they’re very valuable and well-explained!
Best wishes
Your courtesy in debate is very refreshing, Laura. Thank you. I’ll try to do the same in this response.
Some of your points are thought-provoking, such as the wider definition of ‘luck’ – I am lucky I wasn’t born to an addicted mother, for example, or in North Korea, or indeed in the Middle Ages. Although I’m not sure what debts I can owe to anyone on the basis of blind fortune, I do accept that I could have had worse starts in life than the one I did in fact have.
I guess my central point is this: I don’t see how it’s fair that we subsidise certain people to live in KT on the basis that they are very poor and/or were born here, when the people who are required to provide that subsidy have no chance of ever living here. Why do the people who provide the subsidy have to do the big commute from the suburbs every day? Why don’t they get the benefit of a leg-up from the state to live in the area they were born in in or would like to live in but can’t afford?
On your point regarding social mobility: I understand why mobility is important and I fully support a meritocracy (without which I’d still be living in an insalubrious minor suburb in the provinces). But I take issue with your suggestion that asking the less well off to live outside of the wealthy areas of inner London is condemning them to poverty of aspiration and indeed poverty in general (I’m not sure if you really meant this but it’s how your comment read): 80% of the UK lives outside London and seems to do just fine in both cultural and economic terms. And I rather suspect that a central part of social mobility is geographic mobility – how can we ever expect to learn and grow as a community if we enable people who do not want to move from home to never have to move in search of education or work?
And lastly – I’d be careful about suggesting that working class kids / poorer folks only do well when they have the middle classes geographically close to them. That seems patronising to me – and anyway, don’t poorer people have positive role models of their own? And even if it were true – just how much can we ask the local middle class parents to do? I’d suggest that the primary responsibility of all parents is to provide their own children with an atmosphere conducive to learning and betterment – not to provide that for the kids ‘in the community’.
I’ll leave it at that for now. But thanks for the continued debate.
Hi Julia. I feel like you have missed the point that Laura is making. It’s not that she doesn’t understand economics, but that she doesn’t define a community in economic terms. To Laura, and to me, and to many others, a community is bound together through shared experience and values, not a financial admission test. This is the crux of the conversation, and something that you don’t address, being so narrowly focused on ‘community’ as a type of reward for wealthy people to purchase. Your understanding of community is clearly based on your own narrow experiences – by your own account, you have moved around a lot and prioritise work over time with friends and family. That is a completely valid choice, but probably limits your understanding of community as a deeply connected local culture, which is hugely valued by many in Kentish Town.
Your argument is excessively focused on your own experiences, as if this conversation is a personal attack on you. Maybe you, personally, weren’t ‘lucky’ but your personal anecdote does nothing to counter the reality that privilege (in terms of both wealth and educational opportunities) are overwhelmingly concentrated among small groups and passed along in families. Of course some people are able to become wealthy because of nothing but their own efforts, but these cases are rare and society is structured to keep them as such. We all need people to work at our shops, and pick up our rubbish, and educate our children, and keep our streets safe – these are indispensable jobs that require hard work, but yet do not pay enough to allow people to live in Kentish Town without subsidised housing. Should all the shop workers move to Aberdeen and commute to London to earn £7p/h? Or should all the shops in London close, and the rubbish pile up uncollected? Would you want your child to be educated by someone exhausted, forced to commute several hours for a lowly paid job?
Telling low income people to ‘go explore’ Manchester etc is shockingly unaware. These are cities hours away from everything and everyone that many born-and-raised Kentish Towners know. You clearly don’t understand the value of deep community ties: the importance of family assistance for working mothers; the necessity of local social support networks for those unable to travel; the joy of feeling like you ‘belong’ among a group of people that you were brought up with, and that your parents were brought up with. Telling a low-income working mother to pack up her family and ‘go explore’ Glasgow, or an elderly man to ‘go explore’ Aberdeen is so devoid of empathy that it makes the discussion pointless – your values are so out of sync with mine (and with those outlined in Laura’s article) that we may as well be speaking different languages. I’m happy that professionally successful ‘enterprising’ individuals are moving to Kentish Town, but not if that means sending the low-income families that are integral to this community to ‘go explore’ distant cities. I don’t feel that our community is based on those type of values.
Thanks for your contribution, Jessica. I understand the points you make about the importance of community and how values contribute to that. And it sounds lovely, it really does.
But in order to achieve what you outline, someone has to pay for the poorer people to live here (and currently that’s not themselves, for reasons we all know why). So currently, to achieve the type of community you want, the way we are paying for it is by asking people who have worked very hard all their lives to do well but who don’t earn stratospheric sums of money to subsidise people who may not have done the same, enabling that second group to live in discounted accommodation in lovely areas that the first group will never get a chance to live in. That doesn’t seem fair to me, and since you seem to be a fair-minded person I imagine it doesn’t to you either.
I agree that there’s an inequity in my solution too – that people pay their own way – because it results in some people who’d like to live here not being able to. But which is worse? The inequity of trapping middle-income people in long commutes and high taxes to subsidise the very poor? Or asking the very poor to live somewhere they can afford and work their way up to being able to afford where they want to live? I would choose to reward the far-sighted hard workers, but I’m well aware of the cost of doing so.
Hi Julian, Laura and Jessica,
I agree with pretty much everything Laura and Jessica have said but would like to add to the debate.
Julian, I was somewhat exercised by your comment “if you want to be one of those people, you need to pay the price of admission; you can’t sneak in because you were the lucky sperm who got born here.” Does this mean that everyone is born with the same chances in life, the only variable being post code? Everyone has the situation at home, same level of intelligence, same desires?
Of course not. I am lucky enough to have been able to move to Kentish Town recently and fully appreciate how lucky I have been to not only have a stable and supportive family but also the ability to get decent grades at school and go on to University.
That allowed me to have a decent choice over where I chose to live. That shouldn’t mean I have the ability to boot out someone from Kentish Town who has lived here all their lives.
Thanks,
Tom
Here here
Has Thatcher some how been brought back from the dead? Julian your views are what can make London such a lonely city to.live in at times. Thank goodness some of us haven’t been infected by tory media brainwashing.
I think this attitude is blinkered with bitterness and Laura’s article is far from woolly. Who would work in all the essential low waged service type jobs eg shop & restaurant staff, school and health centre receptionists, loo attendants, classroom support staff, to mention a very few? These crucial and crucially hard working workers couldn’t afford the transport costs into a central location like Kentish Town if they were removed to an outer London ghetto. A diverse community is about much more than the simple economic model Julianator describes. Congratulations to him for being so hard working and successful, nothing can take that away but who is going to care for him when ill, aged, and in need but a lower waged member of the community.. And maybe happiness can be achieved by a simpler outlook than his.
I could tell it was Julian rather than Julia, just from the tone – but I bet he was narked by Laura’s assumption otherwise.
Martin: I can assure you I remain resolutely un-narked. I might suggest that you examine your own assumptions given you can apparently tell whether a writer is male or female from their tone alone.
CarolS: I’m not bitter. But I have worked hard to be able to live in KT, an area that I regard as lovely and perfectly placed. Many (in fact, all) of my friends are not so fortunate, and while I’m not bitter, I do admit that it rankles me that they continue to work very, very hard but will never get a sniff of living in a place like this – yet are required to subsidise the people who were lucky enough to be born here to continue living in discount accommodation. Why is it essential that the lowest paid live in discount accommodation in KT while my acquaintances have to do the 60 mins+ one-way minute commute from outer London because they make a bit more money than would qualify them for council housing or housing benefit and weren’t born here? That doesn’t seem fair, or indeed particularly socially mobile.
Julian,
Do you want a London that is socially segregated based on wealth? Do you want a London full of ghettos of the poor, which as we’ve seen from cities like Paris leads to social segregation, higher levels of crime and weaker communities? Do you want children from poor areas to only go to school with other poor children, some likely having difficult home lives, which will almost certainly affect the quality of the education for all the pupils in the school? Do you really want a London like this?
If the answer to these questions is yes I don’t think Kentish Town is the place for you because as everyone else has set-out above, it is a place of social integration, of strong community, where the rich help the poor and the poor help the rich, we learn from each other and grow stronger together because of it.
KTick: I can indeed confirm I am in favour of nice things and equally strongly against bad things.
But the more relevant issue is not whether I am good or evil, but this: to enable poor people to live in expensive areas, we have to subsidise them. At the moment that subsidy is being provided by hard working people who don’t get to live in those lovely expensive areas themselves but who have a little too much money to be entitled to the subsidy that enable them to do so. How do we resolve this inequity while also achieving the community you desire?
Julian is talking prices, Laura is talking values
Anyone who refers to friends as associates is definitely missing something
exactly ^^^
Excellent contribution to an important issue, but I think certain commentators need to ‘get real’ that we’re not going to magically find £ hundreds of millions to buy ourselves out of London affordability issues (regardless of who’s in power). Here’s a couple of practical solutions that are – for reasons I struggle with – considered unthinkable by many…
1) Why is it fair for council houses to be for life, regardless of current income? Frankly, it’s a bit sickening when you see someone getting a better quality of life than you can afford (nice car/ satellite dish/etc), simply because long ago they were granted subsidised housing.
2) Is it really so bad for the council to sell off a few hugely valuable period houses from its stock? If the funds can be reinvested in a larger volume of affordable housing, surely that’s the right thing to do.
Agreed – I struggle to keep ‘the wolves from the door’ what with the mortgage, energy bills, taxes etc…yet my road has at least one family who have ‘been here for years’ who don’t appear to do a stitch of work but drive around in an f-off 4×4 and have all the accountrements like Sky TV. I can see where ‘their’ money goes as they all wear it well and the old man is knocking out gear all hours to boot….and guess what? We all pay for them to have that priviledge – and it really is a priviledge. Sickening.
Wow, I’ve heard that selfish narrow-minded people like this exist, but I didn’t know that they might be lurking on my road. Jeez. No wonder we basically have a tory government at the moment.
I know KTick, you should see them.
I’m really interested in this debate. I’m writing as someone who, even though my wife and I both earn above the national average wage, is about to move out of Kentish Town where I’ve lived all my life because I can’t afford to stay here. Lots of things annoy me about that, but it’s never, ever, occurred to me to feel jealous or resentful of people who live in Camden in Council Housing.
Regardless of values, I’m trying to quickly think this through:
If Camden sold off all their housing, or raised rates to current market levels, what would happen?
It seems to me that
1. People who did live in subsidised housing, many of whom are doing the low-paid, semi-skilled jobs that are essential to keep well paid, highly skilled people healthy and happy – i.e. think about the wealthy lawyer on my road. To do their job properly, they need someone to protect their house (police), clean their street, get them to work (taxi/bus/train), keep their office clean, produce and make and sell them lunch, whilst also looking after their children, produce, make, sell them dinner etc etc etc. To have hard working, enterprising successful people in an area, there needs to be a good provision of services to attract and keep them there and look after them – those people doing the semi-skilled/unskilled jobs would have three basic choices.
a. They charge much much more for their services, e.g. a tenner for a coffee, which its unlikely even wealthy people would like to pay for long
b. They totally up sticks and decide to move to a different region all together, which means London’s services will suffer because there will be a drain of talent out of the London area so we get left with the really unemployable
c. They decide to stay and work in London for low pay but with a far reduced quality of life and have even less opportunities for social mobility than they do now, living in ghettos of poverty that are almost impossible to escape from.
Option a is economically and socially unsustainable, option b is bad for wealthy, hard working Londoners certainly, and option c would kind of be a step back ignoring the last 300 years of progressive, post-Enlightment political theory.
Forget those people for a second, and lets think about me. If there was lots more housing stock subsequently on the market then
a) I could afford to buy a bigger place but it wouldn’t gain much or possibly lose value (ultimate middle class apocalyptic nightmare) because the area would be really boring like Richmond or Barnet and there would be no decent and cheap services, and my quality of life would suffer.
b) I could possibly afford to buy a bigger home but I’d struggle to then pay to do it up (a lot of Council housing is poorly maintained, and it would be harder to find decent labourers after they’ve all been shipped of London)
c) I couldn’t afford to buy a bigger home anyway because anything good would get snapped up by Developers and Foreign investors
None of those options are very attractive to me. So instead I think it’s right that we, as taxpayers, can support people who are unable to afford to live in the area at a market rate to still live in the area. From me being born in London, virtually everything that’s enabled me to have a good education and get a good job that pays me a good wage, has been because there have been lots of people working in healthcare, education and social services, throughout my life, that have in turn been supported by the State, which in turn is supported by my parents, us, them, anyone who pays taxes. It’s flawed, imperfect, has anomolies and economic inefficiencies, but it ultimately works at creating a reasonably balanced, healthy, happy, stable society. I’ve benefitted so much in my life because of provisions from the State like Council Housing, I can’t personally fathom how now I could turn around and blame it for my having to leave Kentish Town.
It is frustrating to me personally that I can’t afford to live in Kentish Town anymore, but it personally annoys me more that my taxes are going towards subsidising the big companies who squirrel away their profits and do everything they can to avoid contributing to our State , whilst paying our neighbours in Council housing a very low wage that has to topped up through tax credits. I don’t see any point to subsidise the rich, but there’s a lot of benefits to subsidising the poor.
It’s provisions like Council Housing that prevent our areas becoming completely unequal ghettos between rich and poor. I personally am really greatful we have it, and there are a lot of reasonable arguments we need more, not less.
I agree. Laura has raised a really important debate about what sort of society we want to live in – one where resources are directed at improving the quality of life, cohesion and opportunity for communities and all who live in them or one that helps the rich to further their interests at the expense of the low paid and unemployed. We have become a more unequal society over the last 10 years and everyone suffers – poorer health and well-being, not feeling appreciated and valued by society, higher crime and fragmented communities, families and lives. It has been heartening to read the generous, warm and public spirited sentiments in this debate – I hope those who don’t share these may at least reflect on the points made by me and others. Thank you, Laura.
Apologies, this will not be the most well laid out comment, a bit of a ramble actually.
Like Laura, I was also born and bred in Kentish Town. Over the thirty plus years of growing up there I’ve witnessed all manor of changes. Historically my family go back in the area over one hundred years (my Dad did the whole ‘trace your family’ thing). At the same time we looked into the history of Kentish Town itself. It has oscillated between wealthy and working poor over time. Most recently (one hundred years or so) the poor were essentially forced into Kentish Town to live, being priced out of the inner city as the wealth rolled in. (This isn’t unique to Kentish Town, this happens anywhere in an economic system). The gentrified Talacre Park, with its Lottery funded Sports Center has only been like that for a few years. It used to be something of a ‘shithole’ with a concrete skateboard park we called The Bowl (which wouldn’t look out of place in Escape From L.A.) and a concrete football pitch which took the skin off of your knees at the slightest fall. But it was our grungy park and all the kids hung out and played there all the time, along with the old Talacre Youth Center and the Thanet. I know Laura knows about all of this.
Why do I say this? Well the perception of it being a shithole or not is a matter of position. I suppose that to a particular brand of wealthy person that views areas in categories of how much money they can make, it was a shithole. It was never a place with large amounts of disposable income, but it always had a strong community as the families there had to stick together to help each other through hard times (of which there were many). It was always multi-racial, but mono-cultural in the sense that everyone had a similar concept of law, everyone spoke the same language and we all got on, regardless of money, although most of us were broke.
But from hard times comes the best art and that is something Kentish Town and Camden also generated a large amount of. Musicians, clothes designers, carpenters, foodies and more. (Jimi Hendricks’ first gig in London was in Camden, Pataks, the food company started in Queens Crescent, Punkyfish began in Camden, The Doors played their only UK gig there, The Stones got started there, the Jim Henson workshop is in Camden, the MTV building, the Roundhouse, you have the Camden Crawl every year etc).
The rapid gentrification occurred after the construction of the Sports Center (or the MILF center as some local guys called it, ahem see how accepting we are!) This attracted the mummies from Hampstead and thereabouts who came down and hung out in Kentish Town, indie coffee shops and little baristas opened up to cater to the new crowd. The new crowd got more comfortable hanging out there, they would spend their money in the area, acts like Amy Winehouse (who wasn’t born there but lived there for years) popularised the area as they frequented the same local bars which we all did but we all got on, along with other celeb types coming down from Primrose Hill. Of course this generated a cycle. Bigger businesses noticed and began to move in, to capitalise. More jobs were created but many of the artists were driven out due to increases in living costs (and business rates).
I began to notice new types of people coming into the same bars I used to hang with Amy in, but we still all got on because they were nice people. (We are still happy to give outsiders advice on the late-opening pubs pssst, the Dublin Castle closes late, and accepts the Wedge Card). The local pubs began to close and be converted into apartments or bistros. The crowds got ‘trendier’ as wealthier (not wealthy) people moved into the area. Coupled with macro-economic policies which I won’t go into here, property prices spiked.
For locals it was never about money though, it was about attitude. As long as you have a good attitude to others you could fit in. Coincidentally (in my experience) areas like Kentish Town tend to be more accepting of others than rich areas in London, which is probably why their younger lot like coming into Camden, you really can’t beat the area for the diversity of people, drink and foodie venues and a general accepting atmosphere. Where else can you find rockers, emos, punks, cyber-people, nerds, trendies and whatever else just hanging out? Spend a day on Camden Lock and you’ll see the world (and other worlds) go by, without the merest of a cyber-angel’s feather rustled.
Camden also exploded as a tourist trap as a consequence, the stalls changed from unique, individual hand made fashion and food items to your usual tourist tat, luckily the Market has a nice diversity of food stalls, fashion and art, you just have to know where to look.
These are all natural effects of money moving into an area. Should poor people be protected there? I’m not sure how you define poor these days but in regards to people being forced out, I believe families who have lived there for generations should take preference over families that are in social housing that have recently arrived from abroad and have no real connection to the area. But that’s an entire debate on its own.
The people make an area what it is, not the bricks and mortar. I’m glad I can hang out at the Abbey and meet well spoken, professional people from other walks of life. I like going to the Good Mixer or the Hobgoblin and meeting completely different people. That’s just how Kentish Town and Camden is.
I think I’ve completely lost my thread in this comment, but I spent a while writing it so I’ll publish it anyway. By the way, I used to work in MAP when it was a recording studio, didn’t know it has closed.
Again, apologies how the rambling tone of the comment.
Kentish Town is about community. I was introduced to the area the night I attended a gig at the Flowerpot. Walking down from the station, I bought a water from one of the shops, got a takeaway to line my stomach and had a ‘pre-drink’ to warm up. Every single person I came across was either friendly, interesting, welcoming. I wanted to be a part of what these people had. 6 weeks later I rented a room in a house share here, and have enjoyed every day of being part of it since.
I’m not exactly contributing to the debate, but I’d like to thank everyone who has. These people, and difference of opinions, are what makes this area what it is and what makes it so attractive.
Not everyone can be able to live in every area unfortunately, but I’m very glad we all have a platform to debate our points on, and are passionate enough about our area to take the time to do so.
I really enjoyed this debate! I think Julian sounds like an OK bloke to be fair, and obviously likes KT..and I think a real-life debate between them would be very good fun. What comes over very very clearly and I kind of knew this already, is that Giles Coren is a bit of an idiot. OK OK a lot of an idiot. Can we all agree on that? : )
Maybe Giles Goren is a bit of an idiot, but while his article was a blunt and emotive take on KT being a shithole surely there was more to his article that people seem to be missing here? Surely, he is saying that to people passing through KT it has a high street with lots of discount stores, there is loads of dog cr@p covering lots of the streets (I’m sorry but there is!), and other rubbish dumped on street corners (why did someone decide to dump their fridge at the top NW corner of Talacre last week? Have some pride in your area people!) and plenty of council housing (ohh scary!). On the face of it I think it can look a bit of shithole, particularly if you do come from a bland identikit area of west London (or those passing through on buses to Highgate or Muswell Hill). However, when you take a closer look there is a thriving, diverse and interesting community, there are exciting art galleries, breweries and pubs lurking in the back streets. And that’s great because these hidden treasures are only for those open minded enough to look past what they see initially (or those that have lived in the area all their lives), which keeps KT as a thriving, diverse and interesting community. I’m not advocating that we should make sure that our streets are covered with dog shit and litter to keep our great neighborhood secret (in fact, it would be lovely to clean it up the streets a little!), but I am merely stating that, ahem, I am not sure if I should say this, Giles may have a point.
I await the aggressive ‘you f’ing Giles Coren sympathizer’ attacks.
One more bone to throw in to this discussion? Do people feel there’s any difference between Government subsidising middle-class people through mortgage credits and the new Help to Buy Scheme, and Government subsidising worse-off people through Council Housing?
Tim – interesting point but I think you need to be a little more careful in your assumptions. Some thoughts below:
1. Will it really just be ‘middle class’ people who benefit from Help to Buy? I’d have thought the chief beneficiaries will be the working poor who now have to save for less time to buy a house thanks to the smaller deposit required.
2. I’m not sure that mortgage credits exist? Are you referring to the old mortgage interest tax relief? That was abolished under the Major government (one reason why it’s harder for our generation to get and pay off a mortgage than it was for our parents). Apologies if mortgage credits are something I’m not aware of.
3. Help to Buy could actually make the government money since they will charge the banks around 1% to insure the deposit.. So – unless there are mass defaults on mortgages across the country (always possible in this bubble) this ‘subsidy for the middle classes’ might actually end up adding to the state’s coffers. Of course, noen of this means it isn’t an economically illiterate and dangerous vote-buying scheme.
In the midst of a shopping-Beckham-me youth culture, I’m just really happy to see a young author who is taking a serious interest in the fabric of the society she lives in rather than simply what she can extract from her surroundings for her own benefit. Keep them coming please Miss Murray. We need more of this.
“Look at me” Julian is precisely the reason why we are having this debate. He and his pompous views would have been thrown through the windows of any of the old pubs in Kentish Town Road.
Good job they’re all closing down then innit.
Define “all” Pat. I wish you luck on this one.