A Decade of London in Google Street View

[jmkd]

To coincide with the UK launch of Streetview in 2009, I worked at Tate with Google to produce similar 'then and now' images, except featuring paintings from C18th and C19th compared with the SV images of 2008/9. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/mar/20/art-goo... These were accessible directly from SV as well as on their own map and microsite. Like many such promotional efforts, once its commercial usefulness was depleted Google silently removed access and they dropped the hosting domain by 2014.

[pmlnr]

In 2012 I used to work around the Liverpool Street Station area. I quite liked it, especially the Lloyds building, but at the time there were already a lot of constructions going on.

I haven't been there for years until recently, and the change there is crushing. It became cramped, insanely large buildings everywhere, Lloyds barely visible and tiny with the Cheesegrater next to it. It was an eye opening experience how much can change in a relatively (building age wise) small time.

EDIT: 2009 vs 2019 views of the LLoyd's building:

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5140007,-0.0812995,3a,75y,...

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5139823,-0.0812983,3a,75y,...

[willmw101]

Personally quite like, and can see the value/use of, the dense mixture of old and new architecture in such a central/busy location. And endlessly prefer London's route of having most of its skycrapers in the concentrated, central areas, leaving the rest of the city's skyline low and non-oppressive for the majority of the nicer residential post/area-codes. So much easier to escape the steel/concrete/glass sun blocking monoliths in London than in say New York

[foldr]

I like the new developments, personally. London's skyline has become a lot more interesting.

[detritus]

Liverpool Street, Kings Cross, Holloway - all places once warm and familiar to me are now cold, oppressive masses of dense, synthetic development. London's never really stood still - certainly not in the 20 years I've lived here or the near 40 years I've had experience of it - but the rates of development over the past decade and a bit are astonishing and somewhat saddening to me.

All seems a bit 'too much, too quick'.

[mstade]

I worked there around the same time as you and I thought it felt pretty cramped by then already, but nowadays when I end up in that area I almost feel claustrophobic. The city skyline has really changed massively over the past decade..

[deathwarmedover]

Reminds me of how I was sad when the bridge for Shoreditch Overground station blocked the Tea Building, but that was before the first Street View image it seems: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5231608,-0.0776078,3a,75y,...

[madaxe_again]

I worked on Gracechurch Street, Bishopsgate, Cannon Street in the early 2000s - all four buildings are gone - 60’s - 80’s structures. Crazy rate of churn.

[walterkrankheit]

That sent me down memory lane. Sort of. Went to check Berlin and the two addresses I've held since moving here 10 years ago and realized the photos haven't been updated since July 2008. :P

[jmkd]

Ha, Street View in Germany is an entirely different topic.

[alamortsubite]

Last weekend, I thought I recognized a London exterior in a 10-year-old movie I was watching and added the filming location to IMDb after confirming with Street View. It's been 20 years since I worked there and the shot only lasted a few seconds, so I have no idea how I remembered it. Perhaps from taking the bus up Great Eastern St to City Road? Anyway, the photos on Street View looked pretty similar to the clip in the movie, though I could see other areas I frequented had changed quite a bit. It was fun to cruise around memory lane, and in the end, I spent way more time playing with Street View than I did watching the movie.

Street View is an amazing resource. Google, please don't cock it up. :)

[panoramas4good]

GSV is an amazing resource for tracking street level changes like this. Does anyone know of free resources to view historic satellite imagery of a location? Seems GMaps only shows most recent they've licensed.

[tomclive]

I lived in London in the 90s and early 2000s. I used to love walking whenever I could and walked the commute from Fulham to Westminster.

Some of my favourite places are unrecognisable now. I remember Shoreditch being slightly edgy and going to art shows there in pop-up galleries.

I spent quite a bit of time in a pub called the Bushranger in Shepherd's Bush. I knew the staff and regulars and could relax there. It was quite dark and had sawdust on the floor. I had heard that it had been turned into a wine bar called the Stinging Nettle and looking at Google Maps now it's a Costa Coffee.

[hycaria]

Always more people, always more asphalt, always more buildings. When will this stop.

[m-i-l]

I can kind-of see why some people think that more and more people coming to more and more jobs in bigger and bigger buildings is unsettling. But I think it is better than the opposite, which many inside London's prosperity bubble often seem to forget - remember the decay and poverty in some other parts of England, communities hollowed out by declining industry and lack of jobs, near derelict streets of houses up for sale at £1 each to try and attract people back, people turning to crime and drugs and yearning to return to some largely mythical past which the populist leaders have promised them.

[objclxt]

> Always more people, always more asphalt, always more buildings

London's population today (8.7 million) is only marginally more than it was in 1939 (8.6 million). For much of the 20th century the population decreased - there's no reason that can't happen again, especially if people migrate out of London for work.

[tsukurimashou]

When people start killing each other in big crowded places?

I've been living near or in big cities for many years, communing is impossible, in some cities it is completely full on the road, on public transportation. People become more and more aggressive on the road because they lose their mind spending so much time just sitting there and waiting for other cars to move.

I think it is a shame that so few companies do full remote work, especially in IT. It could really change things.

[Quarrelsome]

it wont and why should it? We might as well mourn the loss of our farming roots whose loss makes Shakespearean dialog impenetrable. Or our loss of maritime roots, I don't know how to load a cannon in a storm or splice a main brace. Is the "progress" that took those elements from me as distrustful of that of concrete and buildings?

In terms of London though up is good, its way too much of a sprawl and would benefit from greater density.

[philbarr]

When we decide that we don't want perpetual growth. So - not any time soon.

[ak39]

Almost all of the buildings in a city like London would be associated with administrative occupations. People pushing paper or buttons. Do we really need to meet at an open plan office to complete our daily tasks? Can we please start getting going the real value "gig" economy in the form of remote work for 90% of these jobs in the cities. Imagine working for a company in London but living outside ring M25!

It will take a paradigm shift to make location irrelevant.

[huffmsa]

Well, depending on how badly this Wuhan thing goes, we could have a few years of no growth

[dmos62]

I'm half-heartedly rooting for an early semi-apocalypse. Early, because the later it comes the worse it will be. Might come off as misathropic, but if one thinks that we're doomed by uncontrollable inertia (which I'm not entirely convinced about, but it's a worthwhile scenario to explore), this is the best case scenario. In that vein: hurray for Brexit; Trump 2020; 2008-scale economic bubbles are improbable; go radical fascism; say no to solidarity; we don't have to rethink transportation; late postmodernism is going great!

[nnq]

Wow, that's amazing, go London! Most other western European cities are quite stagnant in comparison.

[pmlnr]

Stagnant? Not at all. Maintaining certain aesthetics? Yes. Most European cities have had looks for centuries, and they intent to keep it that way.

[bregma]

All change is bad. A lack of change is even worse.