Eastern Block

摘要

Except where sites fall prey to super-rich financial corporations oozing out of the Square Mile, it is remarkable how the dogged, proletarian character of London's East End persists, more than a century-and ahalf after Charles Dickens explored its streets. It is dense, mixed-use, vibrant and thronged with a polyglot population - the ideal venue, you may think, for the born-again believer in inner-city living. But relaxed and convivial, the East End is not. It has a hard, grimy, competitive edge to it. Its buildings are little more than the unyielding, inscrutable banks of remorseless traffic gulleys. Among the many public institutions lost almost without trace are several departments of London Metropolitan University.