Will secretlondon ruin our city?
It appears that some Londoners are afraid that their favourite spots are going to be bombarded by the 180,000 members of the facebook group. Although the arguments against this seem obvious the outrage is slowly growing as it has gone beyond the odd wall post and into the blogs.
In a blog entitled ‘Why Secret London might ruin our city’ the author argued that ‘The result, I can only assume, will be for all of those lovely little places to quickly become overcrowded and not-so-lovely little places, but that is only the beginning.’
In response to these criticisms, one secretlondon member, Kerry Tucker argued ‘Today I’ve visited three places I’ve seen mentioned here, none of them needed extra security and crowd control.’ It is clear that the fear of everyone descending on your favourite cafe at once is extreme and completely unfounded.
But this is about more than an irrational fear of having to queue for coffee. The question is whether taste should be something shared or guarded. Isn’t it elitist to keep hidden gems private? To share these places encourages independent business to thrive, which raises the level for everyone and encourages a better standard for our city. This is about building a more shared community instead of one which guards personal space. In the words of member Robert John Haughton ‘If I can get one person to step out of Starbucks and walk down the street to an independent coffee shop that I feel has a better experience then this system works.’
secretlondon
timjdavey
Tiffany
Rob Haughton
dzoppos
AlasdairBell
If london doesn’t welcome you, hong kong needs you here!
Can you set up a secret hong kong?
London is big and brave enough. Secret London will not only about obviously visitable places. It’s not only about twee coffee shops. It’s also about people’s daily lives, an unusual vista on the way to the tube, an amazing graffiti on a hidden wall, a personal story about a tower block. It’ll be about transient happenings and scenes. About forgotten traditions. And independent hard-hard-working businesses will love a bit of attention from time to time, even with the occasional flash mob. It will come and go I’m sure. Interestingly I just read a 1960s published book about ’secret London’. Talking about pie shops in Camden, run-down but promising Islington, the few remaining gas lights etc… London has more people than some countries in Europe. We need to be proud of it and be part of it, not just live here.
I agree – I think that Secret London can only help those independent businesses surive. As well as businesses, there may be little walks or parks or spaces that need visitors, friends and supporters to keep them from falling into the hands of developers. I think there are so, so, so, many places in London – it can only be for the good.
I think you rather misrepresent the argument I was making. If you have a look at my post and read the argument, you’ll see that of course I am too for making London better, but my argument is a structural one. My point is merely that in developing places rather than spaces one does damage to the possibility of a consciousness of the city (which in turn often relies on an understanding of the city’s interstitial spaces), rather than maintaining the old consciousness, one that reads the city as a set of artefacts qua commodities and the fetishism that this imposes rather than challenges. The argument is one against reification of the city, not that I’m worried I may have to queue for my coffee.
@Jacob: Having read both you intial post and your response to this counter-point, I’m sorry to say that I don’t find the argument compelling.
On the contrary, I feel that methods of sharing esoteric information or uncommon areas within the World’s cities will do more for enhancing their “consciousness” than less. interstitial spaces are, for the average tourist or resident, unremarkable, because they don’t contain “things” that are known about.
As it stands, these visitors go from “important moument” to “tourist-trap” to “closest available McDonald’s or Starbucks” without a thought of the connectedness of the city and a thought to what is “around” instead of just points of interest.
The knowledge shared through SecretLondon and other sites will enhance the experience of the cities by making the small, the quaint and the unassuming (but excellent) businesses part of a City’s conciousness, beyond the tiny group of locals, allowing tourists to see what an area really has to offer, instead of just being urban space between what their guide book has deemed as “areas of interest”.
i think it is a good idea to share certain information and suggest to other people where to find nice hidden spots in london but at the same time i think people should try and discover a bit more themselves.i lived in london for a few years and i spent lots of time roaming the city in search of nice places, sometimes it just happened by chance!obviously other times friends gave me some tips about places and events but creating a blog or even a group on facebook it’s excessive!! take Bourogh Market for example.does anybody still go there? well, unless you have a very good camera and want to take your friends visiting london for the first time!!a couple of years and you will have to pay a ticket to get in!!
Hi there – my blog is also about cool new places to try (as is Tired of London Tired of Life) but I suppose it’s a result of my personality and tastes and so will only appeal to a certain number of people. I think your idea is fantastic – in fact like many people I’d thought a while ago that this sort of sharing secrets site would be great but don’t have your enthusiasm, efficiency, willpower or quite frankly resources to do anything about it so congratulations!
Great idea for people to share their ideas, I suppose the issue is that you need to know what someone’s tastes are first to work out if you’d agree with their suggestions. This would be hard on a facebook page, but on a website if you could do likes/dislikes and then suggestions then it could work.
Anyway congratulations on a great job – the amount of suggestions on your facebook page is exhausing to me but I’ll have a look from time to time to see if there’s anything interesting there!
Sasha @ The Happiness Project London