Why Alexander Proud says London isn’t what it used to be

Imagine being 21 again

“When I left University and went looking for excitement, culture, nightlife and beautiful young things, I chose London.” Alexander Proud says that back then he couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

But if he were 21 again today Alexander Proud says that he’s not sure he would choose London now. London in 2021 offers crippling rents even if you’re commuting in from the edges of Hertfordshire or Surrey says Alexander Proud. It means £200 a head in mediocre restaurants and the sure knowledge that your favourite nightclub will be turned into a block of luxury flats with a Tesco Metro at the bottom.

“It no longer feels like anything could happen in London. In fact, it feels like the kind of place young, cool people might want to leave for the coast or, post Covid 19, to work remotely from the Med, where you might actually be able to afford a flat that probably costs less than a room in London.”

The Property Crisis

Alexander Proud notes that many friends have moved to places like Margate, or Hastings. Places where poverty is still visible at the edges, and there are still Victorian three storey buildings at affordable prices (for a Londoner at least). Where funky little independents alternate with record shops-cum-cocktail bars and genuinely cool, artistic local initiatives are taking over street corners and abandoned warehouses.

Walking around Margate, Alexander Proud says that a Londoner can feel nostalgia for the decaying Regency terraces of Camden in the 90s. The pioneering hipster shops on the Kent coastline are what Shoreditch was in the 00s. The young, arty types were like the Notting Hillbillies of his 20s and of course that is what has happened. Half of Notting Hill and Shoreditch is down by the sea buying a detached house with a garden and off-street parking with the money that they made selling their tiny studio flat in Dalston.

Alexander Proud acknowledges that London’s boroughs are now filled with rich, successful people in their 40s and 50s who are only a bit cooler than their counterparts in the Home Counties.

Living in the capital, says Alexander Proud “You tend to work with the tacit, unexamined assumption that you’re at the centre of the cool universe. Places like Dalston and Peckham and Camden are where the future of the culture is being forged in a thousand craft beer bars, but on reflection... this isn’t really true anymore.”

Entrepreneurs & Start-Ups

Alexander Proud says that: “Start-ups and young entrepreneurs are choosing to locate their businesses in Margate and Manchester, Bristol and Birmingham.

So Alexander Proud is calling it: “London just isn’t the centre of cool anymore”

It is a logical progression from over-inflated property prices, and the monstrous growth of chain-stores and chain-restaurants. Young, cool people can’t afford to live in London anymore, it’s a city for aspiring bankers and lawyers – and even they can’t live where they used to.

Alexander Proud notes that he is not anti-gentrification. A lot of the work done to clean up grotty parts of London and improve sanitation and provide new residential space was necessary, but a City needs a constant influx of new 20-somethings to rejuvenate, to rebel and to create. Without young risk takers who want to bring down the establishment where will innovation and new ideas emerge from?

Alexander Proud is quick to say that he isn’t suggesting that rich people shouldn’t live in inner London. It’s just that they need to share. “We need areas of Zones 1 and 2 that aren’t the next big property hotspot. Areas that are affordable for the young, cool, creative people. Cities like Berlin and Madrid get this right, why can’t we?”

Where is the next ‘place to be?’

Towns like Margate and cities like Bristol are renowned for their local restaurants run by local people. It’s exciting to eat out, to discover something genuinely original and innovative. London is swiftly becoming sterile and sanitised. Even Soho has lost its urban edge; dive bars and strip joints have been replaced with smart restaurants and members’ clubs, Pret-a-mangers’ and Paul’s bakeries. All very ‘nice’ but not very ‘cool’.

As for London as an engine of job creation and a centre for sectors like finance and law, the rise of remote working and the ever-increasing cost of locating and paying salaries in London can only speed up the exodus to the coast or the hills.

So what does that mean for Alexander Proud, will he sell up and move to the seaside? Alexander Proud reassures us that he is still a Londoner at heart.

“My businesses are here, and I still love walking to work, along the Thames, around London’s parks and through all the hundreds of years of layered history. Maybe I’m getting old and London is my familiar pair of slippers, but I’m not willing to give up on her yet. London has seen too many seismic shifts, outlasted all the fashions and trends, withstood all the revolutions and riots so far. I have faith that she can still come full circle. Perhaps the post covid world will provide more of an opportunity for new businesses to find a foothold on the high street and for new owners or renters to pick up affordable apartments closer to the centre. That might be one positive outcome from the appalling crisis of the past 18months, and anyway, as they say: ‘bored of London, bored of life.’ I’m not bored yet.”