Demolition site, Hoxton
The Old Street
roundabout is surrounded. The wrecking crews are converging from all
directions. The traffic island whose geometry lends its name to the
London home of tech start-ups, skinny jeans and wall-to-wall wall-art, is
under siege. The decaying Victorian buildings which have incubated the
successes and failures of the new information economy over the last few years are being torn
down to make space for gleaming new steel and glass towers.
Silicon Roundabout was
always a convenient, but somewhat misleading moniker. There are tech
start-ups all over the city, with a significant number already housed
in steel and glass at Canary Wharf – a very different social space
from the coffee houses and boutiques of Hoxton and Shoreditch.
Nevertheless the area does have a distinctive buzz, which it would be
a shame to lose. According to one local estate agent, much of the new
residential property is being bought off-plan by overseas investors
looking for a safe haven for their cash, and may well remain empty
once completed. And the office blocks creeping up Bishopsgate are
mostly devoted to corporate finance and its besuited offshoots. Will
the rather appealing well-heeled bohemian vibe survive the London property boom, or
will the relentless march of investment capital clear yet another
piece of the capital of lowlifes with less than six figure incomes?
Demolition site, Hoxton Private apartment
block, City Road
Thanks to Steve Nathan for the estate agent research. More pictures here.