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Hackney - sustainable or otherwise?
As the song says, "No matter where you're from, everyone's local"
This pages gives some background on the London Borough of Hackney,
where I've lived for the last fourteen years or so..
Hackney is a borough of over 200,000 people in North-East London,
one of 32 London boroughs. It has a range of social problems and
has some of the most deprived wards in the UK. It is ranked 4/354
in the National Deprivation Index. It is also one of the most ethnically
diverse localities in the UK, sharing this distinction with three
other London boroughs. It's also directly north of the City of London,
the very richest part of the whole of London.
Due to Hackney's location next to the flood plain of the River
Lea there is a great deal of green space in the eastern part of
the borough which includes playing fields, water treatment areas
and even sites of ecological importance. There's one at the end
of my road over the footbridge!
There is little food growing in an area which, for much of the
19th century, was primarily engaged in market gardening
for the city of London. Now it's mostly houses, but there are several
local sustainability projects including the excellent 'Growing
Communities' community food project.
The particular area of Hackney (Upper Clapton in the north-east
corner) in which I live recently got labelled as 'Murder Mile' after
a series of drug-related murders. It's not the greenest place to
live, but it has its own charms, as the excerpt from a poem by Gail
Chester, a local poet, shows rather nicely..
MURDER MILE
They call it Murder Mile, I call it home.
They call it Murder Mile, I call it
Waiting for the 253 bus which never seems to go beyond Hackney Central
Despite telling us they've improved the service.
They call it Murder Mile, I call it
The Sam and Annie Cohen Day Centre full of Afro-Caribbean elders
The Turkish bakery selling ackee and saltfish bagels, bacon bagels,
croissants and pizzas
The Chinese Take Away selling kebabs, jamake patties, and fish and
chips.
They call it Murder Mile, I call it
Marvin, trapped in his third floor flat, no longer able to visit
his book-lined study, the British Library since the council took
his Freedom Pass away,
He wonders why his wasted body should condemn him to a wasted mind.
Yes, it's murder all right
When you're trying to raise your kids, and two of them have asthma
from the cars
Racing through as they make their way to important other places
that are not your street
And you've just heard they're shutting the local sorting office
'for economy reasons'
Like it's going to be very economical to get the bus to Leyton to
collect a registered letter that arrived while you were out.
They call it Murder Mile,
Yet it throbs with the life of every continent,
With the live and let live of every imaginable cultural variation,
With the black and the white and the red and the green and the purple
and the pink and the brown
Of a swirling kaleidoscope of life
They call it Murder Mile, I call it
Rabbi Grunbaum arguing with Mr Fawzi about whether we should support
Bush over Iraq
Even though, or maybe because they are both on the committee for
Muslim Jewish understanding,
Which, as everybody says, could teach the Middle East a thing or
two about peaceful co-existence.
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