Real-life London has 32 boroughs (plus one), each with their own council and administrative authorities managing local affairs. The borough is also the base conceptual building unit for the TowersMUX grid, with about a dozen boroughs making up what’s generally referred to as “inner London” along the Thames; the rest are known as “outer London” or “the outer boroughs.”
Each “area” listed below for each borough is TowersMUX’s representative space covering the smaller neighborhoods, wards and other components that make up a given borough. Please note that these are conceptual spaces approximating a “snapshot” view of what’s often a very large geographical area — as such, the names, borders and naming conventions are our own, but they do cover every inch of the actual boroughs on the grid.
For reference, please see the full London Boroughs Map.
Camden
A thriving area for the intellectuals, culture vultures and counter-cultures of London. Camden offers a staggering variety of venues and institutions, an abundance of entertainments and multinational vibrancy all wrapped up in leafy tranquility, literary history and quintessential charm.
Areas include:
- Bloomsbury
- Belsize Park
- Camden Town
- Covent Garden
- Hampstead
- Hampstead Heath
- Highgate
- Kentish Town
- King’s Cross
City of London
The original ancient Square Mile of London. Once a walled Roman encampment, now the city’s central and primary business district and one of the leading financial centers in the world. The City of London is a study in stark anachronism, boasting centuries-old taverns alongside the sleekest modern skyscrapers, refuse barges and rose gardens, the Tower of London and the Gherkin.
Areas include:
- Aldgate
- Billingsgate
- Bishopsgate
- Broad Street
- Castle Baynard
- Cornhill
- Cripplegate
- Fleet Street
- Queenhithe
- Smithfield
- Tower Ward
- Vintry
- Walbrook
City of Westminster
If the City of London embodies the financial center of London, temporal power — from Buckingham Palace to Parliament and Downing Street — is centered in the City of Westminster. Centuries-old royal parks provide gemlike expanses of green and color amidst the uncompromising urbanity of the city, and West End is best known for epitomizing the finest and most popular cultures in London.
Areas include:
- Abbey Road
- Churchill
- Hyde Park
- Knightsbridge & Belgravia
- Little Venice
- Marylebone
- Queen’s Park
- Regent’s Park
- St. James’s
- Vincent Square
- West End
- Westbourne
Greenwich
Still recovering from the decades-long withdrawal of military and industrial complexes, Greenwich runs the gamut of ultra-contemporary city life on the peninsula, to bleak stretches of near-identical and crumbling residential towers to the south, to swathes of green parkland and the natural almost-paradise that is Abbey Wood.
Areas include:
- Abbey Wood
- Charlton & Kidbrooke
- Eltham
- Greenwich Peninsula
- Greenwich West
- Middle Park
- Shooter’s Hill
- Thamesmead
- Woolwich
Hackney
Historically one of the bleaker areas on the city’s map, now generally agreed to be the coolest place in London — to visit, anyway. Old stretches of canal and warehouse districts have been reborn into a wildly edgy community of rebel street artists and other creatives alongside quieter neighborhoods, all under pressure of mundane gentrification and under-the-surface turf wars.
Areas include:
- Clapton
- Dalston
- Hackney Central
- Hackney Downs
- Hackney Wick
- Haggerston
- Hoxton
- Shoreditch
- Stamford Hill
- Stoke Newington
Hillingdon
Outer London’s westernmost borough, also the largest, home of Heathrow Airport and RAF Northolt. With sprawling rural and woodlands in the north, concrete and industrial wastelands in the south, Hillingdon is an almost textbook case of attempted commercial encroachments vs. a deep, wild — some might call it savage — history.
Areas include:
- Harefield
- Hayes
- Heathrow Villages
- Hillingdon Heath
- Ruislip Manor
- Ruislip Woods
Islington
A study in contrasts, both in the prosperity of its residents and the environment itself. Staid old Georgian suburbs and proximity to the commercial heart of London, flanked by the rebel creativity of Hackney and the more moneyed Camden, Islington also crouches as an uneasy oasis of mostly-calm in the shadows of skyscrapers.
Areas include:
- Angel
- Barnsbury
- Canonbury
- Clerkenwell
- Crouch Hill
- Highbury
- Holloway
Lambeth
In many ways, Lambeth is the troubled heart of south London. Gentrification has had mixed success in this area of multicultural communities, industrial stretches, a bit of new money, a lot of old crime territory, and a particularly vibrant nightlife and dangerous seat of supernatural power.
Areas include:
- Brixton
- Clapham
- Herne Hill
- Kennington
- Stockwell
- Streatham
- Vauxhall
- Waterloo
- West Norwood
Lewisham
A patchwork of green spaces, genuinely charming village suburbs, rampant stretches of near-lawlessness and a history of class warfare that still lingers. But Lewisham is also whispered about as perhaps having hidden places of power if one knows where to look, and dares to find them.
Areas include:
- Blackheath
- Brockley
- Catford
- Deptford
- Downham
- Forest Hill
- Lewisham Central
- Sydenham
Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
Densely populated, affluent, cultured and boasting a rich bohemian history. Home to some of London’s wealthiest elite, peppered with Royal and Imperial Colleges, tea rooms, palace complexes, upmarket shopping and sprawling wooded and parkland areas.
Areas include:
- Chelsea
- Earl’s Court
- East Kensington
- Kensington Gardens
- North Kensington
- Notting Hill
- South Kensington
- West Kensington
Southwark
An ancient waterside precinct with a Dickensian shanty-town history, Southwark balances frenetically-gentrifying and sleepy working-class communities, aggressively-average green spaces and intricate street murals, picturesque history and high-powered corporations.
Areas include:
- Bermondsey
- Borough
- Camberwell
- Dulwich
- Elephant and Castle
- Nunhead
- Peckham
- Rotherhithe
Tower Hamlets
The original working-class and dark heart of the East End of London, just a stone’s throw past the ghosts of Roman and medieval walls with Canary Wharf as the glaringly wealthy exception. The community here — many descended from the working poor and immigrant labor pools from centuries ago — thrives together, struggles together.
Areas include:
- Bethnal Green
- Bow
- Bromley
- Canary Wharf
- Isle of Dogs
- Mile End
- Spitalfields
- St. Katharine’s
- Stepney
- Whitechapel
Wandsworth
(Overview in progress.)
Areas include:
- Balham
- Battersea
- Putney
- Roehampton
- Tooting
- Wandsworth Town