back
22 comments
In the 2000s British presenter Adam Hart-Davis did a TV series called "How London Was Built". The whole thing is on YouTube now, I highly recommend it.

This episode covered markets and shops. It's fun stuff: https://youtu.be/1vX70fmD_7o

The whole series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxZAPogJjW_gywFGgM61y...

I love these old pictures of London. You can feel the life.

At the time London was the largest city in the world at the centre of the large emprie of all time.

No wonder Dracula was making a beeline for it.

I sometimes wonder if city life used to be more bustling, or if photographers just avoided taking pictures of places without many people.

The past feels so alive!

The entire County of London[0] had an average population density of 60 people per acre (38,400 per square mile) in 1911 and 42 per acre in 1961.

60 per acre being averaged over nonresidential land uses meant that it was still common to find residential densities higher than 40,000 people per square mile (15,000 per sq. km) at that time. Only Tower Hamlets and Islington remain around that density to this day.[1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_of_London

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_districts_by_p...

Much fewer / slower cars. Nowadays people have been pushed aside to make room for cars.
Most of the popular London markets are very alive these days. You can barely move in them some days. So I think it is the latter.
I used to live next to Borough market and saw it devolve from a genuine working class market to a chi-chi hive. The old pie and mash shop was replaced by offices and high-end trinket shops, as were all the other old-school business. It was like watching someone you love being embalmed whilst still alive. I now live in Asia where the market tradition are still vivid and alive.
Eh I live in the UK (wasn't born here) and I think they hold onto too much for too long here. How many "examples of a Victorian house" do you really need?

Japan is a perfect example of picking and choosing, keeping the very important things and building new things everywhere else.

How long will the UK keep all of these decrepit buildings? 100 more years? 1000? 10000?

And what a loss to history, in trying to keep "the good old days" alive that you don't allow current and future generations to also leave a mark in history, as if one era is more significant than the other.

Thats my only real gripe with the culture here. Too much looking back and not enough looking forward.

To a degree you have a point. Indeed, this is exactly one of the points of attraction that Asia holds for me. Anecdote: my Japanese girl friend showed me a bunch of Japanese coins. I thought they were cool and asked if I could have one. She agreed and I selected the oldest, to which her response was 'that so British'.

However.... the point I was making was somewhat different. The buildings of Borough market are still there. What has changed is the community, which has been replaced outright. Moreover, it has been replaced with a 'pseudo community' akin to what you might find in an airport - transient office workers looking for somewhere a short distance from city center. It is the commodification of community - sold to the highest bidder.

That transience, ironically, comes from the regulatory structure we try to use to protect community by trying to protect the buildings themselves. The things we've done that make it hard to build end up preventing new downtowns and markets in places that don't have them today, like residential areas. So then everyone's forced to the old markets for all their new needs, transforming them. If we let go, we'd see new downtowns and new markets in places that might be suburbs today, just like the old markets happened - organically, where a developer thinks they'll make money on one.
Ridley Road Market is not mentioned but worth a visit
Billingsgate is amazing love getting fish there
I live in Spitalfields. I'm sometimes in awe of all the history here.
Great picture! Those crowded streets were no doubt a pickpockets dream.
(2024)
Most of the pictures are even older than that.
Beautiful images of Capitalism building itself.
what does that even mean?
Most likely a Nick Land ref:

> This is because what appears to humanity as the history of capitalism is an invasion from the future by an artificial intelligent space that must assemble itself entirely from its enemy's resources.

Yes, this is one of the main references for Nick Land's thesis that capitalism is (retrochronic) AI.

The one you cited is from Machinic Desire (1993). Interestingly, it also appears in the relatively unknown text Shorelines from the Making People Disappear exhibition (1993):

"What appears to humanity as the history of capitalism is an invasion from the future by an artificial intelligent space that must assemble itself entirely from its enemy's resources." [0]

[0] http://merliquify.com/artwork/exhibitions/making-people-disa... (p. 4)

I really like this interpretation, because ultimately that is what is happening right now.
I have always been fascinated by this interpretation (that capitalism is (retrochronic) AI), which is why I have created a research project on it: https://retrochronic.com