alpha city (rowland atkinson)

Alpha City is a dissection of London’s growth as a haven for the über-wealthy over the course of the past decade. It casts a cold eye over the property boom and the rise in luxury goods. More than anything, however, the author seeks to emphasise how a surge in consumption within the city actually does very little for the majority of its citizens. Wealth remains trapped in select bubbles. If anything, the insulation of wealth from the day-to-day running of the city means that those with most power feel little need to help develop civic space. Libraries are shut, One-O-Clock clubs are nothing more than inconveniences taking up valuable real-estate, as indeed is any use of space for the public rather than the private good. The book shows how the show-homes and prime real estate are in fact little more than piggy banks for the rich, a way of securing capital. Whilst everything Atkinson says rings true and hits home to the sympathetic reader, there is a slight sense of preaching to the converted. The book might have benefitted from presenting the counter arguments which would be espoused by the likes of Johnson, Hannan and other sundry fanatics of Brexit, in order to bring them down. The current political drift in the UK is to say that the arrival of foreign wealth only confirms London (and, supposedly, the UK’s) importance in the world and justifies the madcap plans that are being instigated. It’s easy to back this argument up with the double argument that the desire of the wealthy to ‘invest’ in London is good both strategically and economically. It never feels as though Alpha City nails this canard in spite of the evidence it collects. It feels like a significant book, but one which perhaps wears its heart too much on its sleeve. To defeat the gangsters, cold, hard, heartless strategies will be needed. Meanwhile the London skyline continues to be debased with toy-town towers just as much as British politics has been by toy-town politicians. The two go hand in hand.