Kings Cross—London's Changing Landscape in Microcosm

If you want to see how London has changed, come to Kings Cross. The central London neighborhood, where The Atlantic, the Aspen Institute, and Bloomberg Philanthropies are hosting the CityLab 2015 conference October 18-20, is an almost perfect barometer of the radical changes Britain’s capital has seen over the past two decades.

Long a rundown, neglected area—with two dilapidated railway stations at its heart—Kings Cross has been successfully reinvented as an international transit hub, art world center, and corporate office cluster, so far without entirely losing its character. In stripping away decades of grime and neglect, however, developers have also raised concerns in a city that is increasingly unequal and unaffordable. It is a fair question to ask: is Kings Cross an exemplary success story, or a cautionary tale?