Turns out the bar for genuine neighbourhood credibility shifts depending entirely on who you ask
I set out to ask a simple question around the neighbourhood this week: how long do you have to live in Shoreditch before you can genuinely call yourself a local? The answers ranged so wildly I am not sure the term means anything consistent at all anymore.
The Responses
One resident, who has lived here for thirty years and remembers the area before most of its current cafes existed, laughed outright at the question, insisting anyone under two decades “is basically still visiting.” Another, who arrived eighteen months ago, described herself confidently as “basically local now,” having found her preferred coffee order remembered by name at her nearest cafe.
A third resident offered a more diplomatic middle ground, suggesting locality has less to do with tenure and more to do with “actually knowing your neighbours’ names,” a standard I suspect a fair number of us, myself included, would quietly fail.
An Unresolved Question
I did not arrive at any satisfying consensus, though I did leave with a renewed appreciation for how genuinely fraught and personal the question of neighbourhood belonging has become in a part of London that changes this quickly.
The London Prat has explored similar identity questions across several rapidly changing East London neighbourhoods.
London the Inside has covered Shoreditch’s shifting community identity from a longer historical vantage point than my own admittedly recent one.
I still do not know my own neighbours’ names, if I am honest. Perhaps that is this week’s real takeaway.
More from me: Harper-Thames, prat.uk. Further reading: London the Inside.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
