orkposters London map from orkposters.com via Lee WilshireNeighborhood identity is a favorite subject of mine, especially its connection with urban redevelopment, civic identity efforts, real-estate promotion, and other intentional naming or "branding" efforts. I've written myself on the impact of transit identification planning on neighborhood identity and the influence of cultural identity on local development politics, and earlier this month was quoted in a wonderful Atlantic Cities piece on the subject of neighborhood naming (see also previous post).
Well, a great little Londonist post today strikes right at many of these themes. As the piece's author John rather eloquently puts it:
Too right! He even goes on to note, as I too suggest in my article on the topic(pdf), that "the only time London place names actually seem to change is when a station gets an odd name." Best of all, the ever-diligent Londonist staffers have gone to the length of "track[ing] down these painful formulations, and com[ing] up with some sort of taxonomy." So this is my favorite Londonist post ever. If I may quote at length:London’s place names have always been fluid. Old names are squeezed out by the new and, without fixed borders to work from, your views on where one place ends and another begins are as likely to be about age and class as they are about geography.
All the same, though, deliberate attempts at rebranding are, like most things to do with marketing, horrible, and whenever they start popping up in the papers, we tend to suspect someone enterprising hack is trying to sell their flat.
After some investigation, we’ve identified more than twenty, that seem to slot into four broad categories.1) Property developer speak
• Portman Village – an attempt by local businesses to get more people to venture north of Marble Arch
• Connaught Village – the same, only the other side of Edgware road
• Seven Dials – the posher bit of Covent Garden
• Midtown – everything between the City and the West End, in what looks like a desperate attempt to attract Americans2) AbbReVos.
• NoHo – Fitzrovia
• SoBo – the Bricklayer’s Arms roundabout (it’s south of Borough, y’see)
• SoSho – south of Shoreditch
• NoDa and SoDa – north and south Dalston
• NoGo – our personal favourite, for a no-man’s-land somewhere north of Goldhawk Road3) Attempts to make desolate bits of marsh and industrial estate sound more appealing than they actually are
• Barking Riverside
• Barking Reach
• Havering Riverside
• Dagenham Reach4) Simple, shameless snobbery
• Blackheath Approach – Lewisham
• Lower Chelsea – Battersea
• Bowes and Bounds – Wood Green
• Herne Hill Borders – Brixton
• Steele’s Village – Chalk Farm (the residents association has stuck up banners and everything)
• ‘Highgate Slopes’ and ‘Archgate’ – ‘It isn’t Archway, honest’
