Lowri Griffiths Makes A Slightly Embarrassed Case For Accepting That The Camden That Existed Between 1995 And 2005 Has Passed And Is Not Coming Back
For Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
I want to make a slightly embarrassed case, in this column, for a position I know will annoy many of the people who read me. The position is this: the slow transformation of Camden Market, over roughly twenty years, into a well-heeled theme park for international tourists is, on balance, still better than the alternative. The alternative, in case anyone is about to email me, would have been a slow transformation into a food court with nothing to eat and a set of high street chains with nothing to sell.
The Camden That Existed
The Camden that existed between roughly 1995 and 2005, which I will accept on the reader’s behalf was a better Camden than the one we have now, was sustained by a specific combination of cheap rents, a stable indie-rock economy, a young population that could afford Chalk Farm Road leases, and a design-and-craft supply chain that operated on margins the present retail economy does not support. Every one of those conditions is now gone. No individual decision by Camden Council, or by the market operators, could have preserved them; they were artefacts of a specific economic moment in London that no council could have frozen.
What Could Have Happened Instead
Camden, like most of inner London, could have responded to the collapse of those conditions by becoming a generic high street: a Pret, a Starbucks, an EE shop, a Boots, and a nail salon. This is the fate of most central London high streets whose previous economy has been hollowed out. Camden has, against some odds, avoided this fate by selling something that central London high streets cannot easily replicate: a branded weirdness, maintained by the market operators as a commercial proposition.
The Tourist Theme Park Part
Yes, the branded weirdness now functions as a tourist theme park. The Cuban mojito bars are not Cuban. The tattoo parlours are, with a handful of exceptions, not where serious tattoos are done. The goth clothing shops are staffed by 24-year-olds who go home to Ealing. None of this is great. All of it is better than the generic high street alternative.
The Locals Who Stayed
The locals who stayed in Camden through the transition are, with a few honourable exceptions, not living on Camden High Street’s commerce. They are living on the flat above the shop, the long-lease pub, the independent venues that the market operators have, out of commercial self-interest, kept viable. The locals are fewer, older, and more quiet than they used to be. They are still, in aggregate, a neighbourhood. The neighbourhood is, per The Evening Standard‘s local coverage, less embattled than critics usually claim.
What This Column Is Not
This column is not a defence of gentrification. It is a reluctant acknowledgment that the specific cultural economy Camden represented in the late 1990s is not coming back, that the replacement is worse in specific ways, and that it is nonetheless better than most of the available replacements would have been.
Further: Reductress. SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
