Does where you live really matter that much? In London, this seems to be a big deal. More so because of spiralling property prices, estate agent's lies and the media making it out to be the case. An area is either in or out and buying or renting a home in London is akin to playing real-life Monopoly. Politics also plays a role. Some papers such as London's Evening Standard (ES) will usually judge an area according to its property value and primary political affiliation, i.e. whether it is Tory or Labour run. In the right wing ES, the Tory neighbourhood always wins, and is up-played in all stakes as opposed to the downplaying of other well-heeled but non-conservative-voting London neighbourhoods such as Islington, Blackheath, Dulwich, Clapham or Camden. For example, the ES often describes the working class industrial relic 'Battersea' as a genteel middle class London village, oh so full of people escaping the oligarch-choked environs of Chelsea, but of course, never forget that the owner of the ES is a Chelsea-based Russian Oligarch or son of one - whose interest it is to defend the rights of the wealthy.
The ES' language is often paternalistic towards Battersea and is meant to highlight the superiority and non-affordability of traditionally wealthy areas such as Kensington and Chelsea and other neighbouring Tory-voting areas in Westminster and Hammersmith and Fulham as much as it is aimed at trumpeting the non-existent values of upstarts such as Battersea as an evolving Tory experiment. In all cases, these areas often win in the ES' good neighbourhood stakes.
Anyway to separate fact from fiction, you have to visit SW11 for yourself to decide whether this corner of Wandsworth is actually the genteel London village that it is trumpeted to be and whether it is really worth paying top notch pounds to live there. First thing they never mention in the ES is that the Battersea skyline is dominated by council estates, small working-men's terraces and derelict brownfield sites as a testament to its working class industrial past, which no amount of social-engineering by Wandsworth Council can erase completely. Secondly the Battersea waterfront is littered with brutal plastic and concrete prefabricated condos that for the love of God costs an arm and leg to rent or buy despite their ugliness. They are waterfront Ghettos for the rich who can't afford to live in K&C on the other side of the river but who would nevertheless be happy to stare across.
For the record, there are many parts of Battersea that appear to be genteel because of the local population strata induced to live there by Wandsworth Council's low council tax and neighbouring Chelsea's expensiveness, rather than the aesthetics of the area. Dulwich in Labour-run Southwark and Clapham and Brixton in Labour-run Lambeth are actually aesthetically more pleasing on the eye and have better housing stock than Battersea i.e. outside of the small Battersea park area, however you wouldn't guess that from the accolades heaped on this once communist-voting neighbourhood by the ES and occasionally by the Telegraph.
The rest of London suffers from a similar dichotomy at the hands of the media and estate agents. London isn't the most aesthetically pleasing of cities. Paris and Prague and Edinburgh are better looking, but London maintains a vibrancy and a capacity to re-invent itself (at lightening speed) which none of those cities can match and therein lies its secret to success.
Living in London should be about living in a vibrant but secure, clean and affordable neighbourhood with access to good transport links, schools and a healthy housing stock, however nowhere in London London can truly meet all of those criteria in a nutshell, therefore you as an individual, will have to make a few compromises in choosing those characteristics that are most important to you when planning to settle into a London neighbourhood.
Forget the media hype and get real!
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