Boroughs of London

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

(In progress.)

Areas include:

  • Angel
  • Barnsbury
  • Canonbury
  • Clerkenwell
  • Crouch Hill
  • Highbury
  • Holloway

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

(In progress.)

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