In the previous video, we discussed in excruciating detail how London got divided into boroughs,
why there are 32 of them, and how they all got their names.
But this time, I want to discuss the present.
What is a borough? How can you tell which borough you're in just by looking around?
And why might you be annoyed if a borough boundary runs right through your back garden?
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Every Londoner always knows which borough they're in.
A small handful of geeky Londoners always know which borough they're in.
So, how just from looking around can you tell?
You might walk past a welcome sign.
This is where some boroughs like to show off with extra info
like the fact that they put the community first
or who they used to be twinned with before the names got scratched off.
Enfield uniquely puts welcome signs outside their train and tube stations.
And some boroughs don't bother at all. Camden and Islington are too cool to sell themselves.
While Westminster is the only borough up itself enough to have massive goodbye signs when you leave.
Perhaps the easiest way to tell which borough you're in is by looking for the nearest street sign.
Each borough does theirs in a different style.
Bromley uses white letters on a green background.
Hackney uses lower case letters - the only borough to do so.
Kensington and Chelsea uses a cluttery mix of fonts with distracting commas and dots.
Tower Hamlets uses a rather ugly variant of Times New Roman with slapdash, inconsistent kern pairs.
Islington uses a humanist sans serif with wide open apertures, oblique terminals and almost no stroke contrast.
Ealing uses a slab serif Clarendon with large X height, pronounced ball terminals and short ascenders and descenders across the lower case
which looks more Old West than west London.
Camden uses Franklin Gothic Extra Condensed
badly suited for legibility given the slim counters, barely curved bowls and overall heavy stroke width
the extended characters in the borough logo creating an almost sarcastic contrast.
But there's no contest for which borough does it best.
The splendid street signs of Westminster designed in 1967 by Sir Misha Black
with their handsome Univers typeface and black and red colour scheme
are a London icon in their own right.
which rather unhelpfully means they're unofficially copied all over London and the rest of the world
sometimes turning up in the most far-flung un-Westminstery places.
There are more clues to tell you which borough you're in on rubbish bins, public buildings,
the back of traffic wardens' uniforms, and so on.
Every borough has an expensively designed logo
and once you start looking for the logos, they turn up everywhere.
The 32 logos are...
River, river, river, leaf
text with website underneath,
fox's head with eagle's palms,
lots of boring coats of arms,
flower, tree, tree, tree,
stolen from the BBC,
very nineties, round and bold,
painted by a five year old,
flappy triangles appeal,
happy crown and water wheel,
circle skyline, painty, lame,
looks like someone signed their name,
swirly B and swishy N,
boring coats of arms again,
eight blobs no one understands, that completes the...
Oh, it's hands!
You can sometimes tell you've crossed a borough boundary if you look very very carefully for more subtle clues.
They can turn up in the most random places.
At an arbitrary point halfway down a street, the tarmac might change smoothness,
or the wheelie bins might change colour,
or the speed limit might change for no apparent reason, which by the way can be seen on this map,
or the streetlamps might change colour which by the way can be seen from space.
There are clues in the architecture too. The boroughs used to design their own council homes.
Camden in particular was very distinctive with modernist, low-rise estates designed by Neave Brown,
while Lambeth was known for tall tower blocks designed by George Finch.
The difference in the skyline is still visible today.
And not just for council homes, all tall buildings need permission,
and different boroughs give different amounts of permission.
Westminster, despite covering loads of central London, is noticeably skyscraper shy
compared to the City, Southwark and Tower Hamlets.
There are even clues in the street furniture.
You can tell you're in Bexley when you see these bollards
with their distinctive tapered doric cast iron columns
with fluted sides and majestic greco-roman capping and basing.
This is all very interesting... - No it isn't!
But why does it matter that Greater London is divided up this way?
What are the consequences of the metropolis being criss-crossed by invisible borders?
And how does it affect the people who live near them?
Parking problems.
Boroughs are in charge of permits, meters and fines
and it's not uncommon for a street to be in a different borough on each side.
Residents in Palmerston Road, Enfield can never find a space
because the neighbours on the Haringey side park here for free instead of paying for a permit.
Cycling across a borough boundary can be dangerous.
You can often tell you've done so when your bike lane abruptly stops.
Or, in the case of Cleveland Street, where Camden meets Westminster, swaps terrifyingly to the other side of the road.
Residents of Southwark can use their public swimming pools for free
which is a kick in the speedos for residents of Lambeth who live much closer but have to pay full price.
Some neighbourhoods get neglected as a result of being split between more than one borough.
What, after all, is the incentive for spending loads of money to improve half a high street?
And some areas get forgotten about on purpose, like this popular spot for fly-tipping.
Because it's on the border between Croydon, Merton and Sutton, all three councils claim it's not their responsibility
while the pile continues to fill up with tyres, rubbish bags and middle-aged men.
You don't have to live near a border to be annoyed about the boroughs doing things differently.
All sorts of rules and regulations vary depending which borough you're in.
Wealthy Westminster has the cheapest rate of council tax in London
while Camden next door charges nearly double.
More seriously, the waiting list for social housing varies wildly by borough
because of both the amount of housing available and the different eligibility criteria each council decides.
You can't say unfairer than that.
And perhaps most bafflingly of all...
It's time to play... Wrong Bin!
Foil in Enfield...
Food waste in Barnet...
Clothes in Ealing...
Tetra paks in Southwark...
Ooh, bad luck.
That's the... Wrong Bin!
Clearly, the way the capital has been carved up is causing chaos.
How have the boroughs been allowed to act so differently from each other?
To understand how this absurd arrangement came about, we need to look back through our history.
When the 32 boroughs were first set up in 1965, they were part of a two-tier system.
The boroughs were in charge of personal, local services like schools, parks, libraries, leisure centres, social care,
waste collection, street cleaning, lamp posts and dead bodies.
But strategic, big picture things that affected the whole city at once
like transport, housing, planning, and fire and flood prevention
were run by a super umbrella all-powerful mega building called the Greater London Council.
The GLC was a sometimes controversial organisation.
Sat across the river from the Houses of Parliament, the GLC under its left-wing leader Ken Livingstone
was often at odds with the national Conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher.
They had a habit of displaying huge anti-government banners on their building.
By 1986, Thatcher had had enough, and she had the GLC abolished.
The 32 boroughs suddenly gained new power and independence
and they continued to drift further and further apart.
And that's how London was run from then on.
32 separate entities with no central coordination, no direction, no vision, no purpose.
Until...
In 2000, the sort of Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was very fond of giving regions more autonomy
decided to give Greater London a present.
A directly elected Mayor of London, in charge of transport, police, fire and emergency, planning
arts and culture, environment, housing and some streets.
Unfortunately for Tony Blair, the man Londoners chose to be its first mayor
was his worst frenemy, the former leader of the GLC.
Ken Livingstone was back.
- As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted...
Since the job was created, the three Mayor of Londons have brought the capital together
with brave innovations that might not otherwise have been possible
like the Congestion Charge, the hire bikes and the Ultra Low Emission Zone.
But the mayor's power only goes so far
because despite having the vision, the mandate and the budget, it's the 32 boroughs who are still in charge.
The boroughs still have lots of the powers they gained in 1986,
and this is what often causes friction and disagreements.
For example, the mayor Sadiq Khan promised to build a safe cycle superhighway from central London all the way to Acton.
But in the end it only went as far as Lancaster Gate
because Kensington and Chelsea Council wouldn't allow it through their anti-cycling back yard.
Similarly, Sadiq also promised to ban traffic from Oxford Street
transforming it into a world-class pedestrianised shopping destination.
Londoners overwhelmingly backed the scheme
but Oxford Street belonged to Westminster Council and they put a stop to it
claiming that the "locals" were opposed to it.
So, is the current system fit for purpose?
Should some powers be taken away from the boroughs and given to the mayor?
That's quite tricky to answer.
Deciding who should have the last word on any matter, the local council, the city-wide authority,
or indeed, national government, or indeed supra-national continental trading bloc
is very subjective indeed and depends what flavour you like your politics.
Perhaps there'd be fewer conflicts if there were fewer boroughs.
Councils looking to save money are increasingly merging services with their neighbours.
So, should we do the same as fifty years ago and make the boroughs bigger again?
If that did happen, I wonder if anyone would really mind.
Does your local borough inspire pride, or loyalty, or rivalry?
- What's a borough?
- I live in Canning Town... is that a borough?
- I don't care.
- I was born in Hounslow, my children were born in Hounslow, my grandchildren will be born in Hounslow.
I would do anything for the London Borough of Hounslow. I'm Hounslow til I die.
Yeah, I mean, Hounslow for the Hounslowsians!
Yeah? Hounslow means Hounslow!
Death to Ealing! Death to Hillingdon!!
For most people, the council is a boring, functional entity that you only think about when things go wrong.
The word 'council' belongs in a sentence like "n'oh, I'll have to call the council about that in the morning."
But it's an important thing to care about, or at least be aware of.
Your local borough council has a more visible presence in your everyday life than your national government
and perhaps doesn't get the attention it should.
And, of course, the boroughs have another non-political purpose.
Splitting London neatly into 32 familiar chunks helps us to understand and make sense of our bewilderingly large city.
The 32 distinct communities side by side, each doing things their own slightly different way,
competing with and learning from each other, make London all the more interesting
all the more fun to explore,
and more full of reasons to look up and look closer.
So, are the borough fit for purpose?
The map in its current form has survived countless changes of government and shiftings of power
allowing London to enjoy the best of both worlds for more than fifty years.
It looks like the number 32 will remain significant to London for generations to come.
Or, to put it another way,
yeah, they're fine.
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