Everyone is leaving London and these billboards explain why
- Text by Megan White
How would you feel if you were forced out of the city you’d made your home?
This is the case for thousands of young Londoners, priced out of London by landlords charging extortionate rents and high-rise blocks with ever-decreasing amounts of affordable housing.
How long can this go on? That’s a question posed by London is Changing, a project that aims to highlight the impact of economic and policy changes on the culture and diversity of London by creating huge billboards showing Londoners’ plights.
The idea of Dr Rebecca Ross, senior lecturer and MA Communication Design course leader at Central Saint Martins, the digital billboards, erected in Holborn and the City of London, display a rotation of messages taken from transient Londoners. The messages were collated from an online Q&A about why participants moved to London, why they’re leaving, or why they’re staying. Anyone who has moved in or out of London in the past or next 12 months is invited to take part.
Ross hopes the findings will “encourage discussion about the impact of economic and policy changes on the culture of diversity of London” and reveal more about migration in the city. Although the original billboards have come down, the project continues throughout this year, and Ross hopes to reveal the full set of responses in early 2016.
London isn’t the only city suffering a major housing crisis. Mountain View, CA, is also struggling. In the city where Google’s global HQ Googleplex is situated, residents of the city are facing increasing prices and less property, pricing out middle-wage workers. In 2013, 114,000 new jobs were created and yet fewer than 8,000 new housing units were built.
Even the city with the best housing policy in the US, New York, has similar issues. Over the last 20 years, the income needed to afford a typical New York City apartment has soared more than $10,000, whereas incomes themselves have only risen by around $1,000. The city is nine months into an ambitious plan to build or preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing over 10 years, but residents are still struggling to find homes.
Latest on Huck
Maryam El Gardoum is breaking new shores for Morocco’s indigenous surfers
The Amazigh Atlantic — Through her groundbreaking career and popular surf school, the five-time Moroccan champion is helping women find their places in the waves.
Written by: Sam Haddad
Youth violence’s rise is deeply concerning, but mass hysteria doesn’t help
Safe — On Knife Crime Awareness Week, writer, podcaster and youth worker Ciaran Thapar reflects on the presence of violent content online, growing awareness about the need for action, and the two decades since Saul Dibb’s Bullet Boy.
Written by: Ciaran Thapar
Volcom teams up with Bob Mollema for the latest in its Featured Artist Series
True to This — The boardsports lifestyle brand will host an art show in Biarritz to celebrate the Dutch illustrators’ second capsule collection.
Written by: Huck
A visual trip through 100 years of New York’s LGBTQ+ spaces
Queer Happened Here — A new book from historian and writer Marc Zinaman maps scores of Manhattan’s queer venues and informal meeting places, documenting the city’s long LGBTQ+ history in the process.
Written by: Isaac Muk
Nostalgic photos of everyday life in ’70s San Francisco
A Fearless Eye — Having moved to the Bay Area in 1969, Barbara Ramos spent days wandering its streets, photographing its landscape and characters. In the process she captured a city in flux, as its burgeoning countercultural youth movement crossed with longtime residents.
Written by: Miss Rosen
Tony Njoku: ‘I wanted to see Black artists living my dream’
What Made Me — In this series, we ask artists and rebels about the forces and experiences that shaped who they are. Today, it’s avant-garde electronic and classical music hybridist Tony Njoku.
Written by: Tony Njoku
