The geography of cool

LONDON never set out to be cool. Indeed, London never set out to be anything, which may be the secret of its success. The British capital is essentially a conservative city: communes belong in Paris, springs in Prague and revolutions in St Petersburg. London has never used its built environment to proclaim a sense of change. Even today, of the billions of pounds of lottery money being spent in the capital, most is going on fixing up existing structures, such as the Royal Opera House and the new Tate Bankside gallery. London will never get a pyramid in the forecourt of Buckingham Palace.

Then again London has never had a politician to carry out such a plan. Even the new mayor won't have the power of his counterparts in Paris, Barcelona or New York to push through grandiose schemes. Officially sanctioned modernising projects usually fall flat in London. And Londoners are often the first to deride projects like the hapless Millennium Dome. The Pompidou Centre (co-designed by a Briton) was built in Paris, not London.

No. Cool in London is a village affair. Uniquely, London is a haphazard conglomeration of villages. And the villages were shaped into a city more by the accidents of history than by the imperatives of town-planning. Sometimes a village manages to capture the spirit of the age, to reflect a wider social and cultural phenomenon. Chelsea did so in the “swinging sixties”. In the mid-1990s, “Cool Britannia” was supposed to be spilling out on to the streets of Camden and Islington.

Thus creating “cool” in London is a uniquely organic and authentic process. It is this very authenticity which makes the city such a magnet for the youth of Europe. So how does a London village become trendy in the first place? Here is a step-by-step guide:

• To begin with the area has to be relatively seedy and poor, with a plentiful supply of cheap, but solid, housing. Fortunately, London's villages are well provided with an abundant stock of large Victorian and Georgian accommodation.

• This means that young, trend-setting bohemians—active agents from London's enormous number of art schools—can afford to move into the area when they are at their penniless but creative best. Since the 1960s, artists have been joined by rock musicians, fashion designers and the like.

• For real bohemia you also need immigrants. These are essential to create cultural diversity and to challenge the complacent mono-culture of the resident English. Two of the trendiest parts of London in recent years, affluent Notting Hill and upcoming Brixton, were both hosts to large numbers of West Indian immigrants in the 1950s, because they could afford the cheap rents in the areas.

• The ethnic mix of the areas have contributed to the sense of edginess and roughness that first attracted the trendsetters to the area. Since the late 1950s Brixton and Notting Hill have both seen violent riots.

• This sense of danger is a strong draw for the more adventurous members of the middle and upper classes, as long as the violence can be viewed from a safe distance. They bring money into the area, and institutionalise bohemia into shops and cafés. Most of the trendy areas have been spillovers from the smarter parts of town. Thus Notting Hill from Kensington, Islington from the City and Chelsea from Belgravia.

• All this has to be fuelled by a plentiful supply of drugs. Drugs were as essential to the 1960s as they were to creating the clubbing and dance scene of the 1990s. Though Britain has some of the harshest drug laws in Europe, its capital has one of the most flourishing drug economies.

Put these ingredients together, and a village will reach critical mass—but only for a while. Thus Chelsea was the trendiest part of town in the Victorian era, boasting painters such as James Whistler and writers such as Oscar Wilde amongst its residents. The Chelsea Arts Club survives to this day as a reminder of this vanished era.

Notting Hill started to take off in the late 1960s, when artists and designers like David Hockney and Ossie Clark moved in. Jimi Hendrix died there in 1970, and “The Clash” made it into a centre of punk rock in 1976. Islington began to move in the late 1970s, and the upwardly mobile middle classes (such as Tony Blair) arrived en masse in the late 1980s.

To be “cool”, all these villages had to strike a delicate balance between holding on to enough of the danger, the seediness and the ethnic and cultural mix that made them chic in the first place, while surrendering enough of it to make it safe for incomers to enjoy. The moment it becomes too comfortable, trendification leads inexorably to gentrification, accompanied by rapid house-price inflation. At which point the party moves on.

By the time the film “Notting Hill” internationalised the appeal of that particular village, the game was up. Notting Hill's estate agents now trade on an ersatz trendiness. A two-bedroom maisonette in the All Saints Road, once London's dingiest drugs den, now sells for half a million. But then it is in the middle of a “very trendy” area.

So where is cool now? Hoxton, just east of the City of London, has been the centre of the “Britart” movement during the 1990s. White Cube2, an offshoot of London's smartest art gallery, opens there this week. It looks set to start a stampede as the more avant-garde galleries migrate across town from Mayfair and St James's. But the arrival of so many dealers, let alone the imminent opening of the Prince of Wales's school of architecture, spells the end of the Hoxton scene. And for the future? Watch out for Brixton, which still has some way to go, and Hackney Downs.