London black holes

Thanks to London Connections’ brilliant visualisation of the commuter take-up areas in London, I’ve marked out — very roughly — where the “commuter black holes” of the central London area appear to be.
   What’s notable is how socio-economic factors overlay this lack of commuter access. As with Simon Clarke’s geographically accurate London tube map (further below), which shows the blatant lack of tube access throughout south-east London, the black holes above indicate things that anyone who’s lived in any of these shaded areas can attest to:
   These are generally poorer boroughs, and racially “less white” than nearby areas. The largest black hole roughly covers the area of Walworth, Burgess Park and Old Kent Road, south London. For residents in further out south-east like me, this is a hinterland one always passes through on night buses, and I can honestly say that most of the more “problematic” things I’ve encountered in London have happened in this very area.


Show larger map

Similarly, in north London, the parts where Regent’s Canal crosses Kingsland Road are notoriously absent of tube, trains etc. but are instead popular with students, creative types and is seeing a recent gentrification process thanks to its vicinity to Shoreditch and the City.
   The area just south of Victoria Park, the area just north and east of Newington Green, and large parts of Clapton are also “off the radar” according to London Connections’ map. This is purely hypothetical, but surely property prices might be more manageable in these areas — or at least they should be.
   Regarding the shadowed parts along the river in the Rotherhithe and Surrey Quays the reason for lack of access is more geological; the river has historically provided access in itself. Plus, these parts are hardly characterised by in any way cheaper property prices, due to their riverside location.

Now, who thinks Boris Johnson has an agenda to improve all this? So far Greater London Authority incentives like the East London Line extension are bound to slowly ameliorate this inequality, but is it really in the Tories’ interest to do something substantial to improve for example the Old Kent Road/Walworth area? This area, together with Tower Hamlets, is arguably as close to a US-style inner-city deprived area we are getting in London — and it’s all a result of the uniquely Anglo-American approach to social (in)equality criss-crossed with age-old colonial wounds: a policy that, more than any other party, the Tories helped exacerbating (especially in the 1980s).