Why I built this

We bought a house in South Norwood in September 2021. When we got round to talking to our neighbours, most of whom had been here a decade or more, they all said the same thing. They'd been waiting for it to change too. The Overground arrived in 2010, almost sixteen years ago now, and that was supposed to be the moment. A couple of coffee shops expanded down the hill from Crystal Palace, and that was supposed to be the moment. Then GQ wrote about The Cocktail Bar on Selhurst Road a couple of years back, and that was supposed to be the moment. It still hasn't been the moment.

SE25 has politely declined to become like anywhere else. Walk down a London high street now, almost any one, and they're starting to look identical. Same coffee shops, same craft beer pubs, same sourdough bakeries. It's nice. But the bits of London you actually remember are the ones that don't fit the template, and South Norwood is mostly those.

I came across Sam Floy's chicken shop map a couple of years after we bought. It's the 2015 viral piece that mapped London's gentrification by counting fried chicken shops against coffee shops. I hadn't seen it when we bought. But the data was frozen in 2015 and a lot has happened since, so I wanted to see what it looked like now. I built it.

120 inner London postcodes, anchored to the £425k First-Time Buyer threshold. Four tiers: gone (Established), going (Breakout), quietly tipping (Emerging), and the ones that have stayed themselves (Untapped). SE25 is firmly in Untapped, which feels right. If you're a first-time buyer trying to make a London deposit go further, the Breakout tier is the closest thing to a “where to look” answer, and the Emerging tier is where it gets interesting. The Untapped tier is where I'd argue the actual texture of London is currently surviving.

It's been a fun thing to build, and I'm looking at doing the same for other UK cities. If people find it useful, I'll refresh it regularly. Methodology page has the lot. Drop me an email with feedback, questions, or just to say hello.

— George, South Norwood