that make urban living bearable and desirable?”
he asks. “You can’t do that by doing a lot of one
thing. You need to do lots of bits of things.”
OPPORTUNITY IS ALSO FOUND at the site of the
2012 Olympics. It’s been converted to a much-
used Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, with the
swimming pool complex, the velodrome, and
the stadium. The athlete’s village, where 17,000
competitors slept, was refashioned into nearly
3,000 apartments. Half of the units rent for mar-
ket rate, half qualify as affordable, many with
enough bedrooms to hold a family.
Last year Khan outlined a $1.4 billion expan-
sion that includes more housing, a dance the-
ater, new campuses for both the London College
of Fashion and University College London, and a
branch of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
In the run-up to the games, then Mayor Ken
Livingstone emphasized the event’s potential to
jump-start a regeneration of neglected, impover-
ished parts of East London. Ricky Burdett, head
of the London School of Economics’ cities pro-
gram and a top adviser for the games, says the
pieces are in place for a multidecade renewal
project, like King’s Cross.
“When we first looked the site over,” he recalls,
“we said we must be nuts. There were tires burn-
ing in the center, where the Olympic stadium
was built.” One of the first chores was to con-
nect the site to the surrounding area by building
some 30 bridges, viaducts, walking paths, and
bicycle lanes. “None of this would have been
built if it were not for the games,” he says. “But
this is a 35-year project.”
Our tour ends near Tower Hamlets, a borough
that may most represent London’s changes and
contradictions. It’s tiny, encompassing only
eight square miles, much of it former indus-
trial dockland. But it is London’s fastest growing
borough, with an estimated 308,000 people, con-
taining some of the city’s poorest enclaves, and
some of the richest.
The borough has been a beachhead for newly
arrived immigrants for three centuries. A land-
mark building encapsulates those layers of
history: It was a meetinghouse for French Hugue-
nots during the 18th century, then a synagogue
for Jews fleeing Eastern Europe, and today it’s a
mosque. The nearby streets have been dubbed
Banga Town, in celebration of the Bangladeshis,
now Tower Hamlets’ largest immigrant group.
The borough also takes in Canary Wharf, the
third largest contributor to the U.K. economy.
Among the tall buildings going up across Lon-
don, 84 are being built in Tower Hamlets, more
than any other borough. Many are part of an
expansion to transform Canary Wharf into a
livable community instead of just a workplace.
It’s where uncertainty about Brexit’s effect on
the thriving financial services industry is most
keenly felt. Some construction has paused. Some
banking jobs have shifted to Paris or Frankfurt.
Last summer, worried borough leaders set up
a Brexit commission to deal with the conse-
quences should jobs disappear and immigration
limits be set.
If the U.K. leaves the European Union, it
will be the first time in centuries that LondonWith the city’s 100-mile
network of canals—
Regent’s Canal in King’s
Cross is seen here—
houseboats became a
response to high rents
on land. But boaters
now face escalating
mooring fees along
with new restrictions
that limit access.140 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC