Love playing with Street View to see how the world used to look when I grew up, but you're right to suggest it'll be a great tool in decades to come to see how things once were. I've always wished Google would one day try to create a historic Streetview using historical imagery stitched together - imagine exploring 1900s London with the freedom of Streetview today!
Another great video Ed. Love the way you're highlighting the good and positive changes in London and Britain's cities, proving that not all things have to be doom and gloom in this country!
I love street view. It's so interesting to see how things change and how everywhere looks different through the seasons. Will be an incredible archive of history in 50 years time.
Thanks very much for such an informative and interesting piece. I lived and worked in London from the late 1970’s to late 2010’s so you have reminded me of much that has changed, for the better. Nice to see the change on Venn St - it was a cut-through/car park when I was working round the corner and looks so much better now.
I've always found the time travel on streetview to be melancholic, for nostalgia and in seeing charming old buildings be demolished for new, characterless monstrosities in the form of apartment complexes and roads. It feels like developments these days are made for making money and nothing more. It's very refreshing to see improvements to areas like this! To have roads be turned into walkable areas as parks or whatever else is a wonderful idea and something I would like to see more of.
Absolutely fantastic video. Great job. It was wonderful seeing all the redeveloped areas of East London, as I've lived and worked in those neighbourhoods for the past 25 years. It's easy to forget what they once looked like, despite a lot of the redevelopment only occurring in recent years.
Not sure how or why I came across your channel but I'm glad I did. You have a very refreshing outlook on modern architecture and urban planning which I like. Excellent videos. More videos please!
It was only yesterday having failed miserably to find images of a street redeveloped out of all recognition, that I belatedly remembered google streetview's 'time travel' feature, and back it all came as I remembered.
It’s so useful - I use it for work all the time. Jealous of people in 100 years who’ll be effortless able to see the streets and neighbourhoods their great grandparents lived in. Wish we could do that now!
I love google more dates function as well. It's an evolving archive of how places change over time. The failures and dereliction to success and regeneration. Manchester's skyline how changed dramatically over the last few years and more is to come, So has it's streets. In the not too distant future we will look back and say how silly it was to have cars going through St Peters Square and Albert Square. How Manchester Cathedral was boxed in by a road and NCP car parks. Deansgate has changed a lot and there is more changes expected. Cities are a reflection of a society's Wealth, Health and priorities. It will be interesting to see what future we build for the next generation.
Totally agree - perfect post. I’m actually from Manchester originally - that city ignited my interest in cities and urban regeneration. I will 100% be doing a video about the changes there, especially to places like Ancoats and St Peter’s Square. Just need to find the time to get up there!
London has changed in ways people might not be able to fathom. I've seen footage on RU-vid of Stratford and the area around Westfield from 2007, where the Olympic Park now is. It's literally just a derelict hole in the ground surrounded by awful, gang-infested local authority housing (and to be fair the rest of Stratford is still like that) but you wouldn't believe what was to come. Westfield itself only opened in September 2011. On Facebook, I saw photos of Bishopsgate taken in 1986. It was hollowed-out Victorian slums that were in the process of being demolished, with cars parked up like any other residential street. There were also photos of Aldgate from 1992. If it hadn't been for a road sign caught in shot, you wouldn't have been able to tell it was London at all. Barely any traffic, the old buildings were totally unremarkable, no distinctive look to it whatsoever, there was just nothing there. People were asked to comment on the location and people were saying Birmingham et. al. I once saw a side-by-side comparison of the London skyline in 2008, compared to 2022 (I think it was?) and again, the change is absolutely unreal, but if you were living there at the time you probably wouldn't have noticed it. 2008 looked more like the 1970s because there were barely any skyscrapers at all. --- I've lived in my current town for 12 years and cannot remember how parts of it looked when I moved here. Street View reminds me and puts things in context, but it also makes me sad that my own memory has basically failed me. I'm having a Mandela Effect - surely that block of flats was already there in 2012? Nope, it was finished in 2016 and you used to drive past the building site all the time. You now remember the marketing materials landing in your letterbox inviting you to rent one. When _did_ they rip up the Acacia Road roundabout and replace it with a one-way system? Oh, that was April 2014 by the way. The corner shop you visit all the time was a Bargain Booze from 2013-2015 and has only been there in its current form since 2019...?! You remember now, you have been to Bargain Booze at that location. Street View is fascinating. You see images of places like CIneworld and can see the posters of whatever movies were out and popular at that time.
The building you mentioned at Bleeding Heart Yard actually had a corner of the new facade added as a mock up a few years before the rest of the building was renovated. You can see this on street view too from 2018. Great video btw! 😊
I noticed this when I was looking around on Streetview but I forgot to mention it!! Do you know why that was there? Really interested. Thanks for your comment I’m glad you enjoyed!
I didn't know about StreetView time travel and I've lived in East London for 10 years, from Canada Water to the Isle of dogs to Hackney Wick and cycle through the canals and River Lea all the time and you've shown loads that I never knew about. I need to get out and explore more nooks and crannies, in person and in StreetView. PS: 4:18 I totally forgive you for that slip. I've lost count of the number of times I've had the year 2000 in my head but 2020 comes out of my mouth.
This is brilliant, I was expecting you to cover some of the more well known touristy areas, but this actually felt like a great tour of the lesser known parts of London.
Love this take on things - it’s definitely refreshed my view on some of the changes in my home town. Still think there could be more creativity in the new builds though. It’s quite hard to find these new residential zones inviting when they’re just as monotonous and cloned as 10/20/(loads of) other bits of the city. I also find the social planning of some of these new residential sites to be a great gesture, but nothing without affordable pricing that actually allows lots of people to come and bring life and culture. Stayed in West Silvertown for a while and it was a bit of a ghost town. Great video
you get so used to abandoned land you almost become blind to it, once they start building on it it's suddenly pulled to the forefront and becomes a real sticking point for many people. It really takes as long as almost complete for people to become familiar with the buildings and become much more accepting of the developments. Hopefully with the new government we can get past the pains of development proposals and just get on with building
Really enjoyed this. Nice how you didn't dwell on the Street View shots entirely and filmed some lovely, well narrated footage of your own. Also positive how you pointed out the variety of building designs around Canning Town and Trinity Buoy Wharf attract the eye and engage visitors. I think the lay person should be more aware of this - of looking up and deciding what works - it would push us towards demanding more from developers in the outer suburbs whose answers are largely square and identical.
It's crazy how rapidly London is being re developed. Another place that has been completely changed around is Wembley, Its gone from having massive flat car parks to dense high rise apartments and student housing and is generally much more pleasant. anyways Great video! I love this urban planning content
I've just found my new favourite RU-vid channel! Thanks for the beautifully crafted and narrated content. Great to hear your take on Goodluck Hope and Venn St. Two favourite spots of mine. I too hadn't realised how recently Venn St had been pedestrianised. Keep up the good work.
Fantastic video! I really want to check out the Canning Town environs and I love the Strand improvement. Venn Street and Bleeding Heart Yard look great! Being able to sit outside, away from traffic is so civilized. Here in Madrid there are more and more streets being pedestrianised and the council has put a motorway underground and built a riverside park on top. I love seeing how London is reclaiming land for people from cars.
Thank you! Really appreciate your comment. I loved visiting Bleeding Heart Yard, and the Strand is a delight now. I’d love to go to Madrid - hopefully going to Barcelona in September and I just know I’m going to be blown away by it. Madrid next year maybe?
This vid came up in my recommended and am pleased to say I watched it and you earned an immediate subscription from me. Went to your channel and surprised to only see one other video (which was also excellent!) You have a really bright future on this platform. Your style is calming yet engaging and really made me look at some of these modern developments through a different lense. City walks and discovering new/old parts of London used to be one of my favourite activities but alas after becoming disabled in 2022 it's not something I can really do anymore, so I rely on videos like this for my fix. Really excited to see what else you've got in store.
This post has been making me smile all week honestly. So lovely to read and extremely encouraging I really appreciate you taking the time to write it. More videos coming soon - honoured to have you as a subscriber.
Lovely essay. Though returning to London to drive to Barbican recently saw me diverted, and even though I was peeved at the time I completely agree with what's being done. I'd still like to make a right turn on Blackfriar's off the Embankment Like I used to mind you!!
London certainly has improved in various aspects, especially by getting rid of many ugly buildings from the 60s and 70s and derelict areas. But there are also many new developments that are as ugly as post war estates (that in time won't be as attractive as they are now as they will age poorly) and others that erased heritage (Fleet Street) due to greed..
Excellent examples and insights. I suggest you should compare urbanism and cityscape development that took place in recent years across the US, compared to the UK. Cities like Austin Texas, Raleigh North Carolina, SLC Utah have had population booms in recent years, and have done an excellent job of improving both infrastructure and providing quality housing for its people. There's other American cities that could be a good source of inspiration too: Savannah Georgia, Charleston South Carolina, Tampa Florida and even LA.
Thanks for this post. I’d LOVE to cover more American urbanism. Honestly it gets a bad rep for the last 50 years but pre-war American urbanism is some of the best in the world IMO. I was in Chicago last year and it blew me away. Their residential streets are lined with trees and gorgeous, human-scale apartment buildings.
I also love Google Street View but I recall about 6 months ago (?) receiving notices from them of an introduction to quite expensive charges which I was sad (and angry!) about...wonder if this has been dropped? Anyway, terrific work CityEd !
I really hope they don’t do this!! To be fair though, it’s pretty staggering that it’s free in the first place. It seems like such an amazing tool which must cost a fortune to run (getting a camera to drive around every street in every city in the world, every year) so I appreciate it being free!
Just stumbled across your video and found it really interesting as I love London and I love browsing Streetview! One small suggestion for the production of your videos though; use Audacity to give a noise removal pass to the audio of you talking. The narrated parts have a little bit of background noise, which is very apparent when the voice over section cuts out. If you get the free audio editor Audacity, open up the audio in there, find a selection where you're not talking and there's just background noise and select it (just needs to be a few seconds), then click the menu Effect->Noise Removal and Repair->Noise Reduction and click Get Noise Profile. Then close that window, go Select->All then Effect->Noise Removal and Repair->Noise Reduction and then click OK. Almost all of the background 'hiss' will be gone. There are, of course, other ways of getting it done, for example, if you have an nVidia graphics card, you can use nVidia Broadcast to use it's AI based noise reduction to do it live. :)
This is great advice thank you! I’ve taken other similar advice and bought a better microphone, but will also do this in Audacity to get the best quality going forward. I know nothing about sound design but comments like this are really helpful thank you
I always ask that! Even if the building is totally scrapped and re-built, why don't they give it a facade? They're very quick to pull down old buildings where I am ... almost to the point where we HAVE no old ones. But what would be the problem with putting a brickwork wall with a 'ghost sign' on the side of a brand new building?
Just my opinion. The development in Blackwell, Canning Town, Bow Creek and Trinity Wharf is not full of character. Yes, some streets have old style Edwardian buildings but you don't notice them among the many new soulless steal building that are already out of date. The interesting area, which is being kept "derelict" that I think is interesting and full of character is the area south and west of Star Lane station which is still industrial and has a few clubs popping up for raves and such. I hope they don't "develop" that part. But that's just my opinion. PS: I understand that we need to build new hoses and multi-level buildings are the only efficient way to do this, but we don't have to delude ourselves that it has character.
@@CityEd. Thank you for keeping an open mind, and good video by the way. It would be interesting if you could do another one about the area west of Star Lane station and Manor road. Seems to attract lots of young party-goers in the early hours even though it is very industrial and run down. I don't think it gets mentioned in any tourist books/sites. You'd be the first I'm sure.
The 'tiled' buildings at trinity buoy wharf arent actually tiled. They are glaze bricks. There is a greater variety of brick and block types in our countries construction industry than there ever have been before, from EWI brick slips to glass blockwork.
I always associate Bush house with the BBC. Bleeding Heart Yard is not part of the City of London. Come to that, Ely Place around the corner is technically Cambridgeshire.
I really like the new neighbourhoods you showed. However i feel like the townhouses just lack something. They almost fall into the uncanny valley, where they are recognizable ad townhouses, but arent quite fully fledged townhouses as we know them. Sort of like AI/deepfake faces as compared to real human faces. I think it is because of the lack of details. They feel sterile imo. The proportions are there, the colors, the use, just the small details not. Overhangs, brick detailing, roof overhangs, and all sorts of things like that. Unfortunately those features are expensive, and developers tend to avoid them. They arent functional, but imo they provide a huge aesthetic benefit.
Great comment! I think with land and construction costs so expensive nowadays we are lucky to get any sort of decoration. I did read an article a while back about architects being hopeful about the possibilities of 3D printing, which could bring down the cost of decorative masonry. I await with anticipation!!
