Search

The paper analyses conflicts associated with policies to protect the built heritage. Such conflicts relate to a host of tensions between private and public concerns and specifically between pro-development and pro-conservation approaches. To examine these cleavages, the paper operationalises private and public concerns over heritage by asking if there is a recognisable set of justifications that policy-makers use for supporting a pro-conservation or alternatively a pro-development approach? To do this, the paper looks at appeals decided by Her Majesty’s Planning Inspectors in London. The findings show that although they are not dichotomous, public and private interests in heritage development can be factually recognised in the setting of appeals. Moreover, the paper finds that Planning Inspectors often channel conflicts through the prism of certain public interests, namely, protecting architectural and physical attributes of the building and its surroundings. Although inspectors are instructed to actively weigh in other (potentially overriding) considerations in heritage appeals, such as socio-economic and proprietary issues, these considerations do not appear to have the same standing within the decision-making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The UK's purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) sector has seen significant institutional investment in recent decades. This paper unpacks contemporary trends and perspectives on the sector. It questions whether PBSA has moved from being an "alternative" to "mainstream" residential asset class, framing the analysis through the lens of market maturity. Design/methodology/approach: The methods triangulate perspectives drawn from literature on the evolution of PBSA as an asset class with illustrations of investment trends across the UK between 2005 and 2020 using data from Real Capital Analytics (RCA), combined with findings from 40 semi-structured interviews with investors and stakeholders in PBSA in the UK London is the focus of the work, whilst other regional cities are integrated for comparison. Findings: The results demonstrate that London's PBSA market is ahead of trends currently being replicated in regional cities. However, the regions currently offer greater return potential and opportunities for risk taking compared to London, where yields are compressed, and the market is considered lower risk. The concept of maturity remains useful as a framework for evaluating markets, however a more granular analysis of sectors is necessary to further understand asset classes within sectors. PBSA continues to trade at a premium across the UK; it is considered the most mature residential asset class. Practical implications: The emergence of PBSA as an asset class continues to play a developing role within the residential sector and UK investment market. Risk, value and local context remain key when integrating PBSA into institutional portfolios, and as the first to consider the UK market from a qualitative research approach, this research provides a snapshot of these influences in 2021. Originality/value: Our approach offers original insight into investment trends across the UK and is the first to focus reflections on the London market specifically. The research highlights the role of PBSA as a vanguard asset class for investors into residential, situating its growth within the framework of market maturity and drawing out market nuances from interviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the idea of "place‐based diversity" to examine the nature of undergraduate Geography students' attainment and progression with a specific focus on gender, ethnicity and socio‐economic status. In addressing the empirical neglect of progression when assessing inequalities in achievements among Geography students in general and the specific lack of research at the departmental level, the paper contributes to debates on challenging intersectional exclusion within the discipline at a university in London. While it shows that undergraduate Geography no longer privileges male, middle‐class students in terms of attainment, those from black and minority ethnic (BME) backgrounds perform less well. While this is partly addressed by encouraging patterns of higher progression rates among BME students, much more needs to be done. Contributing to existing Bourdieusian analyses of student experiences as well as the role of the university in society, this requires exploration of students' identities and agency, especially their "dutiful aspirational capital," together with the "institutional habitus" of departments and universities and where they are situated geographically. While departmental support mechanisms have helped in facilitating progression for the disadvantaged, this must be combined with developing more positive diverse role models, curriculum change and targeted support practices that avoid the "black deficit model" which assumes that BME students are "lacking." This paper challenges assumptions about undergraduate geography students as white, male and middle‐class based on research within a department of Geography in the east of London in the United Kingdom (UK). In arguing that progression must be taken as seriously as attainment, it shows that while female undergraduates and those from less advantaged socio‐economic backgrounds are not necessarily hindered, ethnicity remains an issue. In explaining these patterns, the notion of "place‐based diversity" is useful in capturing the structures of institutions that are situating within specific localities and policy environments as well as the agency of departments to create conditions that are conducive to celebrating diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds upon Colin McFarlane's 2011 call inCityfor an ‘assemblage urbanism’ to supplement critical urbanism. It does so by mapping the spatio-political contours of London's 21st-century housing crisis through the geophilosophical framework of Deleuze and Guattari'sA Thousand Plateaus([1980] 2013, London: Bloomsbury] and Hardt and Negri's analysis of the metropolis inCommonwealth(2009, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). The paper examines the Focus E15 housing campaign based around a group of young mothers in the East London borough of Newham. In 2013, the mothers were living in the Focus E15 foyer supported housing unit for young people in Newham, but they were subsequently threatened with eviction as a result of welfare cuts. After successfully contesting the mothers’ own prospective expulsion from the city, the campaign shifted to the broader struggle for ‘social housing not social cleansing’. The paper draws upon participant observation at campaign events and interviews with key members. The Focus E15 campaign has engaged in a series of actions which form a distinctive way of undertaking housing politics in London, a politics that can be understood using a Deleuzoguattarian framework. Several campaign actions, including temporary occupations, are analysed. It is argued that these actions have created ‘smooth space’ in a manner which is to an extent distinctive from many other London housing campaigns which are rooted in a more sedentary defensive approach based around the protection of existing homes and communities—‘our place’. It is such spatio-political creativity—operating as a ‘nomadic war machine'—which has given rise to the high-profile reputation of the Focus E15 campaigners as inspirational young women who do not ‘know their place’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cityhas, from its inception, paid close attention to London, to the ‘World City’ or ‘Global City’ ideologies underwriting its concentration of wealth and of poverty and to challenges from among its citizens to the prevailing orthodoxy. This paper focuses on London's extreme experience of the housing crisis gripping the UK—itself the European nation with the fastest long-term growth of average house prices and widest regional disparities, both driven by overblown financialisation and the privileging of rent as a means of wealth accumulation, often by dispossession. Londoners’ experiences stem partly from four decades of neo-liberal transformation and partly from accelerated financialisation in the last two decades and are now being accelerated by the imposition of ‘austerity’ on low- and middle-income people. The social relationships of tenancy in social housing, private tenancy and mortgage-financed owner-occupation are, however, divisive and the paper ends by identifying what may be the beginning of a unified social movement, or at least a coalition, for change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper argues that gaining an effective perspective on the London housing crisis requires an understanding of what is happening at the highest levels of the real estate market (£2 million+). It is based on data collected over two and a half years (2013–15) of research amongst the London elites through the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) project ‘Life in the Alpha Territories: London's “Super-Rich” Neighbourhoods’. It unpacks terms such as ‘foreign investor’ and frames the specificity of London as a global city, as well as using ethnographic and interview data to understand how actors who impact upon the city understand their role themselves. Distinctions are drawn between those who buy houses in Mayfair to shore up capital and middle-class Chinese investors, who buy flats to rent them out as investments. It differentiates between different types of ‘empty’ houses, and also considers the impact of ‘old’ elite families selling up and moving out who also purchase properties for their children in areas adjacent to traditional ‘elite’ hotspots, creating further ripples of gentrification, price rises and unaffordability. Eschewing the facile conflations of the populist press, this paper shows how capital flows into London, resulting in a mix of misplaced and mismatched investment—fuelling the building of the wrong types of units at the wrong price points. The paper also examines how the underuse of land deeply affects London well beyond its traditionally elite and ‘prime’ areas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Contemporary cities are thick with infrastructure. In recognition of this fact a great deal of recent work within urban studies and urban geography has focused on transformations in the governance and ownership of infrastructural elements within cities. Less attention has been paid to the practices through which urban infrastructures are inhabited by urban dwellers. Yet in all sorts of ways infrastructures are realised through their use and inhabitation. This paper argues for the importance of attending to the ways that infrastructures are reinterpreted through use. Focusing on a case study of commuter cyclists in London, it explores the ways in which cyclists accommodate themselves to (and are in turn accommodated by) the infrastructural orderings of London's streets. Confronted by the obduracy of a road infrastructure designed primarily for motorised traffic, cyclists show a diverse range of approaches to negotiating movement through the city on bikes. The paper describes how this negotiation can be understood in terms of the more or less skilful processes of navigation, rule following, rule making, and rule bending. This involves a polymorphous mix of practices, some common to driving, others to walking, and yet others unique to cycling. In conclusion, the paper suggests that transformations of infrastructures found within cities need to be understood as much through emergent changes between their elements, and that close attention to how infrastructures come to be inhabited offers productive avenues for thinking about ways to improve them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing on Granovetter’s classic work on embeddedness in systems of social relations, this paper proposes the concept of ‘differentiated embedding’ to explore how migrants negotiate attachment and belonging as dynamic temporal, spatial and relational processes. When Poland joined the EU in May 2004, the large flow of migrants to the UK was perceived by many migration researchers as heralding a new form of transient mobility associated with short-term, temporary and circular migration, and high levels of transnationalism. Relatively little attention was paid to how these migrants were integrating in local contexts. Based on 20 in-depth interviews and network mapping with Polish migrants, resident in London for a decade, I examine why participants extended their stay and how their decisions were shaped by interpersonal relationships locally and transnationally. London as a ‘superdiverse’, global city offers place-specific opportunities for building networks and developing processes of embedding. Nonetheless, a focus on networks risks overlooking the wider structural context in which migrants live and work. Thus, I argue, there is a need for a differentiated concept to capture the nuanced interplay of structural, relational, spatial and temporal embedding. This concept not only captures multi-scalarity and multi-sectorality but also levels of belonging and attachment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses the role that the green wedges idea played in the main official reconstruction plans for London, the County of London Plan 1943 and the Greater London Plan 1944.1 Green wedges were theorised in the first decade of the twentieth century and discussed in multi-faceted ways up to the end of the Second World War. Despite having been prominent in many plans for London, they have been largely overlooked in planning history. This paper argues that green wedges were instrumental in these plans in the formulation of a more modern, sociable, healthier and greener peacetime London. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

London's internationally acclaimed "cycling revolution" was characterised by an unprecedented investment in cycling infrastructure, particularly cycle lanes manifesting as Cycle Superhighways or Quietways. Despite the hegemony of cycle lanes in London's overarching cycling paradigm, the London Borough of Hackney has historically achieved the city's highest rates of cycling and a long-standing reputation as a cycling borough in the absence of cycle lanes. Instead, Hackney has always opted for spatial interventions (such as filtered permeability, a borough-wide 20 mph speed restriction, and speed humps). This paper challenges Hackney's reputation as a cycling borough and the alleged success of its spatial interventions. I argue that Hackney's privileging of spatial fixes treats spatial interventions as apolitical and value-neutral, which ignores inequities entrenched in cycling. I also argue that Hackney has taken for granted its high rates of cycling, therefore effectively adopting a cycle-blind (akin to race-blind) and cycle mainstreaming (akin to gender mainstreaming) approach to cycling policy and interventions. Consequently, Hackney's spatial interventions for cycling raise the profile of already-visible privileged cyclists (white, middle-class men – the middle-aged men in Lycra, or MAMILs, and the hipsters) for whom cycling is a lifestyle choice while further erasing "invisible cyclists" for whom cycling is an economic necessity. In order to be a relevant and sustainable mode of transportation for Hackney residents, equity and social justice must foreground the borough's approach to cycling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the processes by which middle-class belonging is generated, through the exploration of social and spatial trajectories in narratives of residential choice and mobility. It is based on an understanding of residential choice as indicative and constitutive of social mobilities. In particular the paper builds on the discussion of the match between habitus and field that lies at the root of the notions of middle-class belonging and place attachments to draw attention not only to the conditions under which ‘fit’ is possible, but also acknowledge that belonging is a dynamic process, generated and maintained through residence that feeds back into understandings of classed identities. This paper argues that residential space is not just appropriated to reflect pre-existing tastes and lifestyles, but may also contribute in the transformation of habitus to fit to particular neighbourhoods and ways of living. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper focuses on the spatial imprint and social impacts of the emerging geographies of concentrated overseas investment into London’s high-end real estate market, particularly the boroughs of Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea. Framed by literatures on the 1% and the super-rich, and based on a mixed methodological approach of qualitative interviews with intermediaries and a quantitative mapping of overseas investors using 2011 census data, the results speak to the pervasive nature of “safe-haven” seeking in London real estate and its attendant transnational provenance set within a laissez-faire regulatory framework. In so doing, it makes an important contribution to the geographies of the super-rich, the class geographies of London, and the broader sense that overseas investors are producing what we call “pied-à-terre” urbanism which builds on a conventional gentrification framework (exclusionary displacement and a more affluent incoming group) but also exceeds it in several ways, leading to an increasingly socially attenuated landscape. This exceeding relates to: a different kind of rent gap, in that it is not speculative but safe-haven seeking, a guaranteed return on investment, and occurs without previous disinvestment; the agents are not traditional gentrifiers; the transnational nature of the process, with no attachment to particular places like in the traditional gentrification model; and a process focused on super-prime areas and completely independent of the existing gentrification process in London. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

London's housing crisis is rooted in a neo-liberal urban project to recommodify and financialise housing and land in a global city. But where exactly is the crisis heading? What future is being prepared for London's urban dwellers? How can we learn from other country and city contexts to usefully speculate about London's housing future? In this paper, we bring together recent evidence and insights from the rise of what we call ‘global corporate landlords’ (GCLs) in ‘post-crisis’ urban landscapes in North America and Europe to argue that London's housing crisis—and the policies and processes impelling and intervening in it—could represent a key moment in shaping the city's long-term housing future. We trace the variegated ways in which private equity firms and institutional investors have exploited distressed housing markets and the new profitable opportunities created by states and supra-national bodies in coming to the rescue of capitalism in the USA, Spain, Ireland and Greece in response to the global financial crisis of 2007–2008. We then apply that analysis to emerging developments in the political economy of London's housing system, arguing that despite having a very low presence in the London residential property market and facing major entry barriers, GCLs are starting to position themselves in preparation for potential entry points such as the new privatisation threat to public and social rented housing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

London today hosts more than 200,000 Italian people. A traditional point of arrival for Italian migrants since the nineteenth century, London is a setting characterised by the presence of the ‘old’ classic economic migration – of those who left Italy mainly in the 1950s and 1960s, and the ‘new’ migration, made up mainly of highly-educated people in the professional, academic and arts sectors. These two groups differ as regards their time of arrival, socio-economic characteristics and educational background, and they rarely have the chance or find the need to interact. This paper is based on interviews with representatives of Italian institutions and associations, and with ‘old’ and ‘new’ Italian migrants; participant observation of Italian events happening in London; and some elements of discourse analysis. By means of this empirical material, I aim to show that, besides their well-known differences, the ‘old’ and ‘new’ communities present striking similarities in their migration narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although most historiographic attention about the quality of London's drinking water has been directed towards the nineteenth century, it was an important subject in the eighteenth century as well. This paper focuses particularly on the New River supply to the city and shows that different groups approached the subject in various ways. The New River Company was constantly concerned about quality in regard to matter that affected the water's taste, appearance and smell, meaning mostly weeds, leaves and mud. Popular opinion, however, fixated on one subject above all others: that of people bathing in the New River. This source of contamination created such ire because the practice of bathing was becoming increasingly popular for its health effects; those objecting mingled moral and spiritual impurity with the contamination of the water; and finally, there was a strong class element to the dispute, with the bathers being from the lower classes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The question of whether and how ethnic diversity affects the social cohesion of communities has become an increasingly prominent and contested topic of academic and political debate. In this paper we focus on a single city: London. As possibly the most ethnically diverse conurbation on the planet, London serves as a particularly suitable test-bed for theories about the effects of ethnic heterogeneity on prosocial attitudes. We find neighbourhood ethnic diversity in London to be positively related to the perceived social cohesion of neighbourhood residents, once the level of economic deprivation is accounted for. Ethnic segregation within neighbourhoods, on the other hand, is associated with lower levels of perceived social cohesion. Both effects are strongly moderated by the age of individual residents: diversity has a positive effect on social cohesion for young people but this effect dissipates in older age groups; the reverse pattern is found for ethnic segregation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between strategies to manage poverty and the mobilisation of collective action. Focusing on the period 1979-93, the paper describes how the British Conservative government employed a combination of supportive and punitive interventions to manage homelessness in London. In the process, the paper finds, the government also effectively managed the mobilisation of collective dissent by containing the disruptive effects of visible homelessness while channelling opposition into conventional routes of political power. The paper integrates recent research on poverty management with insights from social movement theory, and explores the implications of these findings for contemporary homeless politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Media & Culture / Medya ve Kültür is the property of Medya ve Kultur and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We respond to the special issue's call for a multiscalar, historicised approach to state capitalism through an exploration of Sovereign Wealth Fund investment into London real estate. We point to how the UK's ostensibly market-led recovery since the 2008 financial crisis has relied in part on attracting 'patient' state capitalist investments. In this, we contextualise the relational regulation of real estate markets as the outcome of intersecting state projects by considering the investment motivations of the single largest owner of London real estate, the Qatari Investment Authority, and the utilisation of their investment by UK governance actors. Focusing on Qatari Investment Authority's involvement in London's Olympic Village, we highlight how this strategic coupling in the real estate market realised domestic and geopolitical aims for the Qataris while facilitating the UK government's strategy to ameliorate London's housing shortage by fostering a 'build to rent' asset class. In doing so, we contribute to readings of state capitalism as an 'uneven and combined' process beyond the traditional state/market binary by placing sovereign wealth fund investment into the context of city governance, the geopolitics of real estate and resultant relational forms of regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mandatory inclusionary housing, which requires private developers to include a portion of affordable housing units in market-rate developments, has become an internationally popular policy instrument to recapture land value and create affordable housing. Two common criticisms of mandatory inclusionary housing are that 1) it produces limited affordable housing and 2) it constrains housing supply and pushes up housing prices. In this study we examined how private developers responded to an expansion of a strong mandatory inclusionary housing scheme in London (UK). Between 2005 and 2008, each of the 33 local authorities in Greater London extended their affordable housing requirements, previously for housing projects with 15 or more units, to those with 10 to 14 units. We found that the expansion led to a reduction in new developments in the target market segment (projects with 10 to 14 units) and an increase in new developments in the unregulated alternative market segment (projects with 9 or fewer units). There was no net loss of new homes, though the strategic behavior of private developers could have dampened the affordable housing output of the expansion of mandatory inclusionary housing. Our findings suggest that, given appealing unregulated alternatives with low barriers, developers tend to divert development to avoid mandatory inclusionary housing. This, overall, calls for better evaluation of the potential alternatives and a more comprehensive, regional approach to inclusionary housing to maximize its effectiveness and to minimize its impacts on housing supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A powerful dystopian imaginary dominates political and cultural representations of Britain's postwar tower blocks, which continue to be linked to social dysfunction and alienation despite extensive empirical research that challenges such claims. This article asks what contested declarations of failure "do" by examining how "tower block failure" is discursively deployed by placemaking professionals--planners, architects, housing managers, regeneration practitioners--engaged in the construction of a "model" mixed-tenure neighborhood in London's Olympic Park. Examining how the aesthetic figure of the "failed" high-rise housing estate is configured in relation to the normative models of citizenship and community that infuse social and spatial policy, I argue "failure" is entangled with a speculative, future-oriented economy of risk management, which refracts wider questions about the nonobvious forms that power takes in the neoliberal city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban areas in Europe and beyond have seen significant changes in immigration patterns, leading to profound diversification characterized by the multiplication of people of different national origins, migration histories, religions, educational backgrounds, legal statuses and socio-economic backgrounds, a condition now commonly described as super-diversity. An important part of this super-diversity is individual migrants who do not follow established chain migrations. Little is known about processes of settlement of migrants who do not form part of larger migration movements and might not be able to draw on the support of others of the same national, ethnic, linguistic, religious and socio-economic background. This article describes patterns of settlement of such individual migrants in London. Drawing on the notion of “pioneer migration”, the article focuses on social networks, examining the kinds of social relations pioneer migrants form in the course of settlement and showing that many migrants strive to form social relations beyond co-ethnics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at the degree to which spatial inequalities reinforce other forms of social inequality in cultural labor markets. It does so using the example of London, an acknowledged hub for the creative and cultural industries. Using pooled data from 2013 to 2015 quarters of the United Kingdom’s. Labour Force Survey, we consider the social makeup of London’s cultural labor force, and reveal the extent to which, rather than acting as an “engine room” of social mobility, London’s dominance in fact reenforces social class disparities in cultural employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The data collected by the New Survey of London Life and Labour between 1928 and 1932 is one of the most significant resources of detailed household information for the interwar period, with data extracted for almost 30,000 households, providing detailed information including birthplaces, hours of work, and wages. This article assesses the process of the original data collection, highlighting issues that mean users of the extracted data must proceed with a measure of caution. In particular, it demonstrates that one investigator employed by the survey, who provided information for around a fifth of households, appears to have regularly submitted generic and estimated information that problematizes the dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article discusses how local diversity is being experienced by Somali immigrants who have previously lived in the Netherlands and are now residing in London. It explores the various challenges and potential advantages of living in homogenous urban areas within a super-diverse city and focuses on three situations: (1) when homogeneity is functional and leads to living in parallel worlds; (2) when homogeneity creates social reproduction, even when located in a super-diverse city; and (3) when people manage to oscillate between both worlds – i.e. between homogenous urban areas and the potential offered by a super-diverse city. The article argues that migrants trace different pathways in the context of super-diversity. They have the ability to operate at different scales – the locale and the cosmopolitan super-diverse metropolis. However, the most vulnerable people have more difficulty in accessing and benefiting directly from the potential offered by super-diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses London life in the First World War as the setting for Herbert Jenkins’ novels and short stories, adapted, post-war, to film. It discusses the role of theatre as a feature of ordinary life continuing, and theatre’s address of extraordinary circumstances, notably with reference toChu Chin Chowand various ventures undertaken by Oswald Stoll (subsequently known as a film producer) and the place of pageantry on screen, on the stage, and on London streets. Rather than dismissing post-war screen adaptations of previous stage and page hits as merely derivative, the article suggests that these be considered as testimony to the place of theatre and publishing in Londoners’ experience and memory of wartime. It is particularly concerned with the 1919 adaptation, ‘The Air-Raid Film’,Patricia Brent, Spinster, directed by Geoffrey H. Malins, OBE, after 1916 best known to cinema audiences for his work onThe Battle of the Somme. In the context of a light romantic comedy, interlarded with farce, Jenkins conveyed a sense of hopes for post-war reconstruction, exhibited also in ‘war touch’ films of the 1920s. Furthermore, in Patricia’s model behaviour, the film anticipates what came to be known as ‘the Blitz spirit’ in the Second World War. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To complement traditional dietary surveys, which are costly and of limited scale, researchers have resorted to digital data to infer the impact of eating habits on people's health. However, online studies are limited in resolution: they are carried out at country or regional level and do not capture precisely the composition of the food consumed. We study the association between food consumption (derived from the loyalty cards of the main grocery retailer in London) and health outcomes (derived from publicly-available medical prescription records of all general practitioners in the city). The scale and granularity of our analysis is unprecedented: we analyze 1.6B food item purchases and 1.1B medical prescriptions for the entire city of London over the course of one year. By studying food consumption down to the level of nutrients, we show that nutrient diversity and amount of calories are the two strongest predictors of the prevalence of three diseases related to what is called the "metabolic syndrome": hypertension, high cholesterol, and diabetes. This syndrome is a cluster of symptoms generally associated with obesity, is common across the rich world, and affects one in four adults in the UK. Our linear regression models achieve an R 2 of 0.6 when estimating the prevalence of diabetes in nearly 1000 census areas in London, and a classifier can identify (un)healthy areas with up to 91% accuracy. Interestingly, healthy areas are not necessarily well-off (income matters less than what one would expect) and have distinctive features: they tend to systematically eat less carbohydrates and sugar, diversify nutrients, and avoid large quantities. More generally, our study shows that analytics of digital records of grocery purchases can be used as a cheap and scalable tool for health surveillance and, upon these records, different stakeholders from governments to insurance companies to food companies could implement effective prevention strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]