Urban metamorphosis: the constant shifting of the meaning of London

What does the word London mean? The answer will depend on a whole number of factors: whether they are a Londoner or not; what they are thinking about when they answer; whether they are referring to the past, present or future; and through which lens they are using to view the metropolis. These are just four variations but there are many, many more.

This year I want to explore how London is perceived as a city and how the very idea of London has morphed dramatically over time and can vary wildly between different people at any given time given their status, attitude and personal prejudices. All cities will have these multiple layered histories that lead to multiple interpretations. But I will contend that there is something about London that is different.

Let’s start with some basic physical facts. As a legal entity, London’s boundaries sit around the large mass of land around the Thames Valley that makes up the Greater London Authority and the 32 borough councils within it. That is the legal jurisdiction that gives the familiar “squashed square” shape seen frequently on leaflets, posters, and keyrings and maps such as this one from the City of London, the city’s tiniest borough. Inside these limits reside a total of 8,945,000 people in London from Croydon in the South to Enfield in the North and from Heathrow airport on its western edge to a country park just outside the M25 to the East.

Source: The City of London Corporation Our role in London

But those boundaries can be very blurry and can shrink or expand. Someone living on the southeastern edge of Bromley may talk about living in Kent, similar to how some on the London/Essex borders pick the latter as their county. And in the northwest of outer London some in areas such as Harrow will still locate themselves in Middlesex, a county that has not existed since 1965 — although the name proudly lives on in the county cricket club.

The reason for this amorphous psychological border is that up until 60 years ago the County of London only extended through around 14 of today’s boroughs (although it was made up of 29 smaller boroughs many of whose names live on as suburbs). In other words, on the 1 April 1965 “London” went from being a little over 117 square miles acres to occupying 607 square mile or five times the land area.

The further one travels back in time, the smaller London becomes as the population revolution and population explosion that fuelled the city go into reverse. Eventually one gets back to Roman times and the founding of Londinium. Why is that relevant? Because the ancient boundaries of that Roman city, later preserved by the London Wall, map neatly on the area now known as the City of London.

The City itself may only have 8,600 permanent residents but is one of a handful of financial centres that are so large they can be referred to by their host city alone: New York, Tokyo, and London. Even after the growth of the financial outpost at Canary Wharf, when bankers, analysts and journalists talk about London they meant the hoards of institutions that filled the one square mile area of the City.

And London as a physical institution may be on the march again as the new government has laid out an agenda of using parts of the Green Belt that has successfully prevented urban sprawl for the last 90 years. Ministers make a valid point that over those nine decades the quality of the green pleasant land has deteriorated thanks to informal use and has become anything but green.

So far the housing, communities and local government ministry has said it wants to target what is calls “greybelt” land and allow councils to change green belt boundaries when they could not otherwise meet housing targets. If the plans come to fruition, London will extend its reaches both into new land and into people’s mind. It may only be a marginal change and another of the constant shifting of London over the decades, centuries and millennia.