Interesting to spot something on Street View (taking a virtual stroll around some London streets) which encapsulates a lot of feelings I have about big cities and the sort of cultural pot they create. This is Hackney. Reminds me of parts of The Old Kent Road. Trash everywhere, tiny little businesses (money transfer places..always) and gleaming new things in the background.
The scene in the foreground hasn't changed in 30 yrs, if not more, but the apartment development in the background would have been council flats when I was growing up.
The private high-density vertical housing boom has been a blight on cities, imho. It was recognized that the post war building boom - the great tower block experiment - was largely a bad idea for humans (at least English ones, it works in SE Asia and Eastern Europe for whatever reason) but they're now back in much more polished form.
On that subject, Christopher Dorley-Brown's photos are absolutely wonderful. They photograph London in much the same way I used to see it.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisdb1/
I was curious so I looked it up; tiny little 1-bedroom flats for ~1200 PCM. London is truly insane.