A Guide  to London Areas

Living in London Guide 

One of the most important things to realise is that all of London is very mixed in terms of what we'll loosely call roughness (degree of crime combined with local hooded youth index). All of the London boroughs are legally required to supply affordable housing - housing that generally takes the form of council estates (or 'estates'. Please see types of housing in London for a description.). It's a policy that I personally support and it's my experience that if you're looking for a bunch of heartless, cut-throat crooks then you'll find a lot more of them in Kensington than you will on any housing estate. Having said that, I think most Londoners would agree that it is your proximity to the estates that determines your exposure to petty (and not) crime as well as gangs of youths taking inappropriate interest in your mobile phone.

The point is that it's very difficult to generalise about the different areas of London. There are some very rough parts of Chelsea. There are some lovely places in Peckham.

North London Guide - Where to live in North London

Having said all that, let's talk in generalities. In extreme generality, people would probably say that the nicer parts of London are in Central London, the North and the West. If they're talking about North  London they're referring to the area around Regent's Park, parts of Islington and the very pleasant residential corridor around Hampstead Heath that stretches from Hampstead up to Finchley and East through Highgate, Muswell Hill, Crouch End and Hornsey. East of Hornsey can be pretty rough.

West London Guide - Where to live in West London

West London is generally pleasant and is very quintessentially English (and expensive) in areas like Richmond, Chiswick, Twickenham and Barnes. There is somewhat of a rough streak in the West that begins in Shepherd's Bush and continues through White City up to Harlesden and Neasden.

South London Guide - Where to live in South London

South London is a very mixed bag with a reputation for high levels of gangs and crime - a reputation that is really not wholly deserved. The rough parts of South London are the areas surrounding Lambeth, Camberwell, Brixton, New Cross, Peckham and parts of Lewisham (this is not a complete list). Having said that there is a very pleasant residential corridor that stretches from Battersea and Clapham to Putney (and beyond into Twickenham and Kingston) down to Wimbledon and East to the area around Crystal Palace and Dulwich. Greenwich and Blackheath are notably nice areas in the South as well.

East London Guide - Where to live in East London

For most of history East London has been very deprived with the poorest of the Capital living there. Subject to the plague, the fire of London, the Blitz and apparently terminal industrial decay from the fifties to the eighties, East London has seen a massive resurgence over the last fifteen years or so with the development of Canary Wharf which now houses some of the world's largest financial institutions. Billions of pounds have been piled into the residential areas in the Docklands in the form of large and swanky apartment buildings. At the same time East London - the area around Hoxton, Shoreditch, Brick Lane and so on has pretty much become the centre of all things trendy and new in art, music and media.

This is not West London! The appeal to the artists and musicians is the down to earth feel, the graffitti and the council estates and it's certainly not for everyone. It can be rough here - particularly in large parts of Hackney although there are exception (Clapton, Forest gate, Stoke Newington) to this rule.

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