The Croydonisation of South London?

Abstract

Well over one hundred years before Iain Sinclair detected his creature of the depths, commentators had been aware, it seems, of the ‘Croydonisation of South London’. By the 1890s and with the new London County Council barely installed, the general trend of population growth in the outer rings of Britain’s major cities including London could be observed. In 1891 the implications for London already seemed clear to Low (quoted in Young and Garside, 1982: 107): ‘It will be a London of suburbs… Not one but a dozen Croydons will form a circle of detached forts around the central stronghold’ with the people of London dwelling in ‘the depths of the Home Counties’.

Croydon has become a creature of the depths, a subtopian city-state; constantly reaching out to devour the lesser hilltop developments of South London.

Iain Sinclair, London Orbital