
A Decade of London in Google Street View - edward
https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2020/01/27/a-decade-of-london-in-google-street-view/
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jmkd
To coincide with the UK launch of Streetview in 2009, I worked at Tate with
Google to produce similar 'then and now' images, except featuring paintings
from C18th and C19th compared with the SV images of 2008/9\.
[https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/mar/20/art-
goo...](https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/mar/20/art-google-
street-view-tate) These were accessible directly from SV as well as on their
own map and microsite. Like many such promotional efforts, once its commercial
usefulness was depleted Google silently removed access and they dropped the
hosting domain by 2014.

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pmlnr
In 2012 I used to work around the Liverpool Street Station area. I quite liked
it, especially the Lloyds building, but at the time there were already a lot
of constructions going on.

I haven't been there for years until recently, and the change there is
crushing. It became cramped, insanely large buildings everywhere, Lloyds
barely visible and tiny with the Cheesegrater next to it. It was an eye
opening experience how much can change in a relatively (building age wise)
small time.

EDIT: 2009 vs 2019 views of the LLoyd's building:

[https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5140007,-0.0812995,3a,75y,...](https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5140007,-0.0812995,3a,75y,232.14h,105.93t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sJ9yOo_2_7mT7HBC1ffL94g!2e0!5s20090801T000000!7i13312!8i6656)

[https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5139823,-0.0812983,3a,75y,...](https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5139823,-0.0812983,3a,75y,203.63h,105.86t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1shD4TI8ifhgMEz-r27lDKsA!2e0!5s20190501T000000!7i16384!8i8192)

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detritus
Liverpool Street, Kings Cross, Holloway - all places once warm and familiar to
me are now cold, oppressive masses of dense, synthetic development. London's
never really stood still - certainly not in the 20 years I've lived here or
the near 40 years I've had experience of it - but the rates of development
over the past decade and a bit are astonishing and somewhat saddening to me.

All seems a bit 'too much, too quick'.

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foldr
>Kings Cross

Come on, Kings Cross was a dump 15 years ago. It's _much_ nicer now. There are
lots of generic-looking glass buildings, sure. But they've also removed the
horrible 60s/70s concrete structures covering Kings Cross station and restored
St Pancras Station and the associated hotel. If you don't think that the area
has improved overall, I'd have to say that there's no pleasing you!

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arethuza
I think "dump" makes it sound rather nicer than it actually was!

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walterkrankheit
That sent me down memory lane. Sort of. Went to check Berlin and the two
addresses I've held since moving here 10 years ago and realized the photos
haven't been updated since July 2008. :P

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jmkd
Ha, Street View in Germany is an entirely different topic.

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alamortsubite
Last weekend, I thought I recognized a London exterior in a 10-year-old movie
I was watching and added the filming location to IMDb after confirming with
Street View. It's been 20 years since I worked there and the shot only lasted
a few seconds, so I have no idea how I remembered it. Perhaps from taking the
bus up Great Eastern St to City Road? Anyway, the photos on Street View looked
pretty similar to the clip in the movie, though I could see other areas I
frequented had changed quite a bit. It was fun to cruise around memory lane,
and in the end, I spent way more time playing with Street View than I did
watching the movie.

Street View is an amazing resource. Google, please don't cock it up. :)

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panoramas4good
GSV is an amazing resource for tracking street level changes like this. Does
anyone know of free resources to view historic satellite imagery of a
location? Seems GMaps only shows most recent they've licensed.

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tomclive
I lived in London in the 90s and early 2000s. I used to love walking whenever
I could and walked the commute from Fulham to Westminster.

Some of my favourite places are unrecognisable now. I remember Shoreditch
being slightly edgy and going to art shows there in pop-up galleries.

I spent quite a bit of time in a pub called the Bushranger in Shepherd's Bush.
I knew the staff and regulars and could relax there. It was quite dark and had
sawdust on the floor. I had heard that it had been turned into a wine bar
called the Stinging Nettle and looking at Google Maps now it's a Costa Coffee.

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hycaria
Always more people, always more asphalt, always more buildings. When will this
stop.

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m-i-l
I can kind-of see why some people think that more and more people coming to
more and more jobs in bigger and bigger buildings is unsettling. But I think
it is better than the opposite, which many inside London's prosperity bubble
often seem to forget - remember the decay and poverty in some other parts of
England, communities hollowed out by declining industry and lack of jobs, near
derelict streets of houses up for sale at £1 each to try and attract people
back, people turning to crime and drugs and yearning to return to some largely
mythical past which the populist leaders have promised them.

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keiferski
The first thing you mentioned is the cause of the second.

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nnq
Wow, that's amazing, go London! Most other western European cities are quite
stagnant in comparison.

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pmlnr
Stagnant? Not at all. Maintaining certain aesthetics? Yes. Most European
cities have had looks for centuries, and they intent to keep it that way.

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bregma
All change is bad. A lack of change is even worse.

