Justice

Now Big-Time Celebrities Are Campaigning to 'Save' London's Soho Neighborhood

The city's famed arts-and-sleaze district is set for major redevelopment. But all the movie-star advocates and nostalgia in the world can't preserve what's already gone.
Benedict Cumberbatch is one of several actors lending his support to the campaign to save Soho from redevelopment. AP Images

London has a new weapon in the fight to preserve neighborhood character: Benedict Cumberbatch. The actor has joined a host of other British stars, including Idris Elba, Pete Townshend, Andy Serkis, and Eddie Izzard, in a new campaign to “save” central London’s most vibrant older neighborhood, Soho. Fronted by Stephen Fry, the campaign wants to prevent the historic, mainly low-rise area from filling up with “shiny, glossy buildings—like Singapore Airport.” In Tuesday’s Standard newspaper, Fry lavished praise on the area saying: “It’s such a magical place, there’s no one else [sic] like it in the world. I don’t think anywhere else quite has this Bohemian atmosphere.”

Faced with new developments that could demolish a cultural landmark and destroy one of the best-known entertainment sites in the quarter, the Save Soho campaign, which has put together this basic video, wants to declare the entire area an official "heritage zone." This could preserve cultural venues and stop current speculative development. But in truth, Soho has already undergone radical change in the past few decades: Could the campaign be too little too late?