Haggerston, that in-between place I call home: Part I

A place of promise

I am drawn to places of high contrasts. The more mixed up their elements, the better. That's why I love a place like Sheung Wan in Hong Kong. Old architecture, culture and enterprise coexist with new architecture, culture and enterprise, making the neighbourhood a sight and sentiment to behold. It's an experiential kaleidoscope. And it's free for viewing!

I now turn my thoughts to where M and I have chosen to plant down some roots. Haggerston is on the southern fringe of the greater borough of Hackney in East London. Part of what I love about the place – and Hackney by extension – can be summed up by the cover of local band Rudimental's latest album, Home. It's a photograph of a gigantic mural in Dalston, which neighbours Haggerston to the north. Known as the Hackney Peace Parade Mural (after a real event), the mural depicts a phalanx of characters marching and playing brass instruments. It was erected during a period in the 1980s when racial tensions in London ran high and the world appeared to be dangerously hurtling toward a nuclear solution. So the mural promotes every subject cherished by the Left: anti-nuclear, anti-racism, tolerance, responsibility to the Earth.

But to complete the mural's representation of the Haggerston/Hackney I love, I would add one thing. Creativity. There is no denying that the creative spirit in the borough now runs far deeper than the ironic looks of that much-maligned species of hipster – the Shoreditch Twat. How otherwise does one explain the existence of Courier (courierpaper.com), a free newspaper that I recently discovered that spotlights London's heady start-up culture, which is still largely concentrated in the borough? Hackney's “Shoreditchification” or “relentless hipsterification” (to quote the Telegraph's Alex Proud) may have its detractors. But I'm going to stick out my neck and assert that those blooming bands of red-eyed techies and entrepreneurs signal a better state of affairs than the doldrums of idle youth scattered about the rest of the country.

On the face of it, Haggerston's appeal derives from it being at a fortuitous crossroads. It is flanked by the bustling Dalston to the north; artsy-trendy London Fields to the east; and the still achingly hip design/techie Shoreditch-Hoxton nexus to the south. Haggerston inevitably inherits interesting foot traffic (said Twats and Dickheads) from these areas. Yet, over and above the merits of its surroundings, Haggerston itself has become a mind-boggling menagerie of peoples, buildings and interests. No wonder its star resident Iain Sinclair, the author and psychogeographer.

All mixed up

Like the rest of Hackney, Haggerston is a rainbow nation, a microcosm of London's immigrant history. Walk its streets on any given day and you would be expected to pass people from a lottery of backgrounds: Vietnamese, Chinese, Laotian, Cambodian, West African, East African, Caribbean, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Greek, Turkish, Polish, Romanian. Aside from the interesting social implications of such diversity, it's great for food lovers like myself who are spoilt by an assortment of international cuisines the area has to offer. I will probably never tire of the Vietnamese restaurant strip along Kingsland Road. I'm also looking forward to trying out On the Bab, the newish Korean street food hash house on Old Street, and Tonkotsu East, the new Haggerston branch of the celebrated ramen noodle bar in Soho.

Another happy consequence – or hope at least – is that children growing up in the area will not know what it's like to be part of an ethnic minority among a powerful and oppressive majority. According to the latest census (2011), no single ethnic group makes up an absolute majority in Hackney. The largest percentage of all residents are still people classified as 'White British' but their 'plurality' has whittled down from 44% in 2001 to 36% of the population in 2011. In other words, we are all minorities to some extent, and generally we coexist peacefully.

Poor versus Rich

If there are tensions within this diversity, it's between the haves and have-nots. Haggerston, like so many pockets of East London, still bears the scars of the Blitz. This was a brutal historical event that had conveniently precipitated a whole-scale clearance of slums in the area. As a result, Haggerston's landscape was and still is dominated by cranky post-war council estates. Even as recently as 2012, the area around Whiston Road, near where M & I live, was a frightening picture of urban blight. So much so that I dared not to walk down that street alone in the dark. Several buildings, including the Victorian-era Haggerston Baths, still stand empty and unloved. It's a wonder that riots never broke out in the past due to this embarrassing ghettoisation near the beating heart of the world's greatest city.

But the problem has not gone unnoticed or unaddressed. New housing projects replacing gutted old crumbling estates have gone up in the area since 2012. Elsa, a 10-year-old girl who grew up in one of the estates on Whiston Road proudly tells me that her family is one of the occupants of the largest new housing scheme in Haggerston. Developers building in the area are obliged to accommodate a mix of housing 'tenures' – from the privately owned to affordable and social housing – into their schemes so that the rich and poor may live side by side. A levelling of the playing field. Sort of. The demolition works are still taking place on Whiston Road, cordoned off by a wall inevitably advertising the merits of living in the area (see photo above), including its proximity to trendy cafes and art galleries (explored in Part II). How well these images of post-economic concerns will encourage benefits claimants to join the upwardly mobile, it is hard to say.

Young people of Haggerston are served by a cluster of shiny new secondary schools that are state-of-the-art in appearance at least. Elsa lives just two streets away from Bridge Academy, which resembles a spacecraft cratered by a meteorite.

Despite some earnest attempts at regenerating Haggerston and Hackney, there remain plenty of housing woes simmering beneath the surface. According to the 2011 census, only 26 per cent of people living inHackney own the house they live in. Privately rented (i.e. non-social housing) accommodations shot up from 16 per cent of all dwellings in 2001 to 29 per cent a decade on, and more people are being crammed into the dwindling stock of available housing. Hackney has therefore become a landlord's playground with some devastating consequences.

The inequality gap, which is reflected across the entire country, will only widen further if wage growth continues to lag behind rent hikes, and property owners continue to enjoy an unproductive bonanza. In the mornings, whenever I take bus route 236 from Haggerston to Dalston (I could walk it, I know), I'm usually sat next to pensioners, people on disability benefits, single mothers with young children and the odd washed up (invariably) male clutching his day's first can of beer. Some of these people have lived in the area all their lives. Will they be driven out one day by the strong economic winds blowing in from the City (London's financial centre) less than 2 miles away?

The housing pressures in Haggerston and Hackney will only become more acute. The population in Haggerston and neighbouring Hoxton alone is projected to grow over 30 per cent by 2021. If the UK's planning law, first introduced in 1947, does not change to reflect and rectify the country's chronic housing shortage and overcrowding of its inner cities, then more stories like this will abound in our newspapers.

Better times.

Bubble trouble

If a city can have a fingerprint, London's must look like a slice of Battenburg cake made by a five year old. It is a messy patchwork of poor and posh living alongside each other. Haggerston is no different. Turn down any one of its leafy streets coming off Queensbridge Road and the area's rough edges near miraculously disappear. I'm talking about its stock of Victorian period homes, many of which have been given a good spit and polish. A recent article in the Guardian exposed just how expensive these properties are now. On Albion Drive, one particular property was valued at £800,000, up from £500,000 in 2007. Other properties definitely stand to puncture the million pound mark. All this nose-bleeding madness is enough to make me think how John Lanchester, author of Capital, could have set his book on this street. Indeed, the inexorable rise of Albion Drive is really the story of London as a whole.

But the wealth doesn't just reside on such quiet, prosperous streets. In the summer of 2013, out of curiosity, I visited a newly renovated 'family-style' three-bedroom apartment on the rather drab, dusty and in parts, dodgy Hackney Road. It was asking for £599,000. It quickly became clear that this kind of dwelling is only attractive to the risk-hungry investor because they don't have to live in it.

A number of factors have caused the value of these houses to skyrocket some 40% percent since 2007. That's despite the intervening five-year recession. Thanks to the area's close proximity to the City, the UK's financial epicentre, minted elites have found Haggerston a convenient place to sleep. The area is also riding on the coattails of the now stupidly expensive but grubby Shoreditch aka Silicon Roundabout just down the road. The extension of the East London Line as part of the London Overground network connecting the East, the West and Southern bits of London - in time for the 2012 Olympics - has also added to the area's drawing power.

Then there are all those cash-flushed foreigners seeking returns in London's property market to contend with. Foreign investors have bought up the majority of Hackney's flashy new builds, further stoking up property prices.

So why, after all this, did M & I choose to live in Haggerston? Think back to the Hackney Peace Parade Mural mentioned at the top of this post. And then read Part II!