Towers rise over London
In one neighborhood in the city, gentrification is taking over
LONDON — Ornate English and Bengali typography adorns the signs of Taj Stores, one of the oldest Bangladeshi-run supermarkets in the Brick Lane neighborhood of East London. The signs evoke a part of the area’s past, when it became known as “Banglatown,” and eventually home to the largest Bangladeshi community in Britain.
But Brick Lane’s future is looking very uncertain, said Jamal Khalique, standing inside a supermarket opened in 1936 by his great-uncle and now run by Khalique and his two brothers.
Modern office buildings of glass and steel and a cluster of apartments and cranes tower above the skyline. New coffee shops, restaurants, food markets and hotels appear in the neighborhood each year. According to one study, the borough of Tower Hamlets, which contains Brick Lane, had the most gentrification in London from 2010 to 2016.
In September, a borough committee approved plans — under discussion for five years — to build a fivestory shopping mall in and around a disused parking lot beside a former brewery complex that houses independent shops, galleries, markets, bars and restaurants.
The project would include brand-name chain stores, office spaces and a public square.
Like many Brick Lane residents, Khalique is ambivalent about the development. Initially, he was not opposed. “I’ve seen a hell of a change from a deprived, dirty area, to a trendy, diversified, multicultural area,” said Khalique, 50.
But now he worries that the new shopping center will undermine the area’s architectural character by adding glass features amid the weathered brick, and will siphon customers from long-established stores. “It will really kill small, independent businesses,” he said.
In a statement, Zeloof Partnership, which owns the brewery site and a handful of other nearby properties, said the new center would create several hundred jobs, mostly for local people.
Its design was consistent with the look of the area and did not involve demolishing buildings, the statement said.
It added that a fixed discount for rent would be offered to a select number of independent businesses currently operating from the brewery.
The company said there was no firm date yet for when construction would start or when the new center would open.
The plans have met fierce resistance from some local residents and campaigners.
The district’s member of Parliament, Rushanara Ali of the opposition Labour Party, said residents had expressed concerns about the “limited concessions” made by the developers, adding that the Conservative government had reduced “local powers and accountability to local communities” over development.
Opponents of the development also argue that it could cause rents and housing prices to rise in what has long been a working-class area.
Still, not everyone is opposed to the plans.
“Brick Lane was dying a long time ago,” said Shams Uddin, 62, who arrived in the area from Bangladesh in 1976 and has been the proprietor of Monsoon, one of the many Bangladeshi-run curry restaurants that once flourished in the neighborhood, since 1999.
Indeed, in the past 15 years, 62% of Brick Lane’s curry restaurants have closed because of rising rent, difficulties obtaining visas for new chefs and a lack of government support, according to a study by Runnymede Trust, a research institute focusing on racial equality.
Uddin said that international travel restrictions imposed by the pandemic, the chilling effect of Brexit and the opening of franchises in a historic market area nearby had deterred customers from visiting. In this environment, he said, the new shopping center could lift up the waning businesses around it.
“When customers finish their business with the shopping center, they may come to my restaurant,” he said. “This is a good thing for our business.”
The changing face of Brick Lane is startling to many longtime residents who remember the many empty properties in London’s East End five decades ago.
“This area had been abandoned,” said Dan Cruickshank, a historian and member of the Spitalfields Trust, a local heritage and conservation group.
When he bought his home in Spitalfields in the 1970s — a property that had stood empty for more than 10 years — Cruickshank said he struggled to secure a mortgage. East London, he said, was “deemed dark, dangerous, remote and to be avoided” by mortgage lenders and property developers.
Now, in what Cruickshank derides as a “peculiar case of gentrification,” homes in Brick Lane have acquired a Midas touch. Average property prices in the neighborhood have tripled in little over a decade, according to real estate agents’ collations of government data, with some soaring over millions of dollars.
In the 1970s, Bangladeshis were drawn to Brick Lane by cheap places to live and abundant work opportunities in the textile industry.
But the arrivals were greeted by discriminatory housing policies and occasional racist violence from followers of the National Front — a far-right British political party with headquarters nearby. Racists smeared swastikas and “KKK” on some buildings. Khalique, the grocery store owner, said he was permanently scarred on his right leg when he was attacked in his youth by a dog belonging to a National Front supporter.
Hundreds of Bangladeshi families squatted in empty properties in defiance of the attacks — squatting was not then a criminal offense in England — while demanding better housing options.
For Khalique, the concerns about gentrification go beyond business — they are also deeply personal.
Outside his store, Brick Lane’s history was visible in the lamp posts painted in green and red, the colors of the Bangladeshi flag, and in street signs that are in both English and Bengali.
“Our elders have fought really hard for this area,” he said of his father’s generation. “It’s in my blood.”