Reimagining Cities: What Does It Mean To Be a Londoner Part Two
The second instalment in our new ongoing DOWNLO.AD Editorial Series: Reimagining Cities
Over the next few months, ON ROAD’s culture and editorial team will delve deep and explore what London could be in the future. Rather than lamenting how the city has changed, we’ll be using our imagination to conjure ways in which we can rebuild London into a city of play.
What makes someone a Londoner? A question that sparked another heated debate in our office this week. Are there measurable qualifiers that signify your inheritance of the title? Do you have to be born here? Grow up here? Live here for a certain amount of time? Or can you be awarded this coveted badge or honour in different ways? Through understanding certain cultural references? Adopting relevant behaviours or ways of thinking? Or simply feeling a part of the city’s fabric and calling it your home?
The answers to the above questions will likely elicit different responses depending on who you talk to. For most of my friends, you’ve got to be raised in London to be a Londoner. It is the formative experiences growing up that give you that distinct, indescribable knowledge: it’s travelling 45 minutes on the tube to get to a party aged 15; it’s knowing people that live in mansions in Primrose Hill and others that live in the estate around the corner; it’s lying about your address when you forgot your oyster card; it’s realising that in London, everyone knows everyone; it’s going to carnival every year and bumping into them all; it’s hanging outside of chicken shops in your school uniform; it’s veering off the pavement to avoid walking under roadsigns; and it’s the endless beef on which area of London is best (east – in case you were wondering).
But, for those who moved to London later in life, this qualification process is flawed and biased. For them, being a Londoner is about more than just teenage experiences. Being a Londoner is about feeling more at home here than anywhere else. “I’ve never felt a greater connection to another place,” says our Head of Recruitment. “I’ve lived here for most of my life, most of my memories are here, my friendships, and the many milestones I’ve reached. I feel more like a Londoner than someone from Kent [where he grew up].”
The best conclusion we can draw from these conflicting opinions, then, is that there is no one definition of what it means to be a Londoner. London is a city with multiple different personalities. Can we even consider it a city? With so many different areas, each one possessing its own distinct identity, London is more like a collection of towns.
Growing up in Hackney, I had little need to leave my borough. I had pubs, clubs, restaurants, community groups, parks, sports spaces, and even a museum (a classic school trip destination), right on my doorstep. I didn’t venture much further south than Elephant and Castle (home of The (now closed) Coronet, Corsica Studios and The Ministry of Sound) until I was much older, only to find out that south London is in fact slightly culturally different to north London. Maybe it’s the distinct formative experiences that shape their upbringings?
If definitions of what it means to be a Londoner differ by postcode, do they also shift in time? With gentrification pricing out residents who have grown up in London, in favour of those who can afford to live here, certain areas of the city look very different now than they did 25 years ago. Meanwhile, local shops have been replaced by large corporate chains, and established communities have been eroded by government cuts to cultural funding.
All of this has contributed to a shift in the character of these places. The children who grow up in Hackney today will have a very different experience of the borough from the one I did (the chicken shop I used to go to after school on Lower Clapton Road is now flanked by an acupuncture clinic and several coffee shops).
There has also been a shift in the social contract that binds citizens of Hackney together. While the borough was once a hub for clubs and music venues (watch this video of funky house producer Supa D to see just how many we’ve lost), there has since been a surge in complaints about nightlife noise levels, with 24,544 made between 2022 and now, which puts our remaining venues at risk. What was once socially accepted and appreciated by Hackney residents is now considered a nuisance by some, revealing how the changing demographic has different expectations of the city and different ideas of what a city should be used for.
If the definition of a Londoner is shifting, are we losing what makes the city great? Whether you were raised here or not, living in London means being connected to a rich history of music, art, fashion, theatre, academic thought and protest movements (much of which was born out of these underground venues) that have spread to the far corners of the globe. From grime that travelled to the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to the first official Pride march in 1972, London’s cultural influence is not to be underestimated. Where London used to draw creativity, its large industrial areas and cheap rent providing fertile ground for artists, musicians and visionaries to grow, there has been a worrying creative drain in recent years. It is no longer affordable to live here if you want the freedom to create. Which leaves me wondering… What are we at risk of losing when the definition of a Londoner begins to change?