text: The area could now be called “superdiverse”, meaning the migration has become more complex, and is no longer in the form of post-war waves of people coming for specific jobs. Diversity has many forms and residents vary by religion, ethnicity, legal and employment status, sexuality and class.
  These days Finsbury Park is recognised for its North African presence with the top of Blackstock Road being colloquially called by some “little Algiers”. But a resident you meet on the street could equally be Polish, Congolese or Venzeulan. Languages spoken in the neighbourhood include Amharic, Portuguese and Albanian.
  Through my research in the area I have found one of the biggest threats to Finsbury’s Park way of life is gentrification, the displacement of working class and migrant communities. It is clear the area is changing and the influx of larger corporate supermarkets, coffee chains and developments threaten the uniquely independent character of the area.
  It now includes pockets, just streets apart, which vary from being among the 2 per cent most deprived in the country to the 50 per cent least deprived, in part due to the diversity of housing provision, ranging from social housing flats to sought after period houses in close proximity.
  Yet amid this change, the multicultural metropolis shows no sign of receding. It is there to see on the street, at the convivial café, newsagent or park and through community and social interactions. Finsbury Park’s streets are superdiverse not just through the bodies moving through them, but through the goods that are sold there, the languages spoken, the smells of different foods cooking and through the interactions that occur.
  You cannot walk down the street without being exposed to the multitude of lives being lived simultaneously. It is a place of intersection and exchange and it facilitates mobility, particularly as tens of thousands of people move through Finsbury Park every day through its transport hub.
  International names inscribed on the street on and around Stroud Green Road, 2016. Image: author’s photograph.
  Amid all this, residents maintain respect for others and the area’s multiculturalism, often because they appreciate the difference of their neighbours. For example, in 2013 after women from St Thomas’ church and Finsbury Park Mosque realised they were based on the same street and yet hardly knew each other, they decided to set up a sisters group, meeting every couple of months to share lunch and tea, chat and practice a unique form of inter-faith solidarity.
  These gestures of everyday multiculturalism show that Finsbury Park won’t be divided by an attack on its freedom precisely because its residents celebrate their differences. It is a neighbourhood which doesn’t seek sameness but thrives on variation and refuses to be defined. In the face of hate it unites, not in spite of, but because of its diversity.
  
  Yesterday, IPPR North, the arm of the centre left think tank concerned with, well, you can guess, put out a rather depressing report about the north-south divide in England’s transport funding.
  Its researchers crunched the numbers on where public spending on transport across the country was going, and found a gap big enough you could lose a whole fleet of trains down there. Some key points:
  The total cost of London’s Crossrail between this financial year (2016-17) and 2020-21 will be £4.6bn – more than the £4.3bn going to all transport projects in the entire north over the same period.
  The £1,900 spent on transport for every Londoner is more than six times the per head funding on offer in the North East (£300) and North West (£290). It’s nearly eight times as as the £250 per head on offer in Yorkshire & the Humber.
  That actually looks generous compared to other regions, like the South West (£219) and East Midlands (£193).
  I have some quibbles about this. Crossrail will actually extend outside London into the East of England (two stops in Essex) and South East (eight stops in Berkshire and Buckinghamshire which are, confusingly, given the region’s name, to the west of London; I don’t make the rules). It’s not clear the IPPR figures have accounted for this: Crossrail is mostly an investment in the London region, but it isn’t that entirely.
  Nonetheless, it’s very clear that London is swallowing a massively disproportionate share of Britain’s transport funding. This is clearly unfair.
  Yet it’s also, I fear, very unlikely to change. The concentration of transport funding in London is politically inevitable, and for at least four different reasons.
  London is big: nearly 9m people live in the capital proper, and a few million more in the commuter towns beyond. It’s probably the most populous of England’s eight official regions (we’re between censuses so we’re not sure, but in 2011 it was only half a million behind the South East, and has almost certainly overtaken it by now).
  More to the point, thanks to its extensive public transport network, London is integrated, in a way none of the others are: an investment in the centre will have benefits for the whole.
  That isn’t true of the other regions. A new branch of Manchester’s Metrolink, say, will be great for the bit of suburban Manchester that gets to join the network, but won’t be of direct use to much of the North West. That makes it harder to sell to the voters.
  Crossrail, though, can be sold as project that’ll benefit all Londoners – not to mention those who commute in from the counties surrounding it. It’s not an exaggeration to say that a fifth of the British population live somewhere in the project’s orbit.
  Result: politicians are more likely to prioritise another Crossrail than they are incremental improvements elsewhere.
  (And yes, this does mean that London’s existing transport network gets it to the front of the queue for more transport investments. More on this below.)
  All of which, one suspects, makes it easier for projects in London to get the green light from the the cost-benefit analysis which the Treasury uses to make spending decisions. Okay, the project costs a bomb… but, wow, look at the benefits!
  The government also tends to smile on projects where it doesn’t have to pay the entire cost. Businesses in London were so desperate for Crossrail that they were happy – at least, after a fashion – to contribute to it through the business rate supplement.
  Couldn’t northern businesses do the same, to show support for transport elsewhere? Well, yes – but there are fewer of them, and they’re not as rich. And most importantly of all…
  …they’re not dependent on an over-crowded public transport system to get their staff to work – because there isn’t one – so they’re less likely to feel the need to stump up. London businesses, though, are dependent on a decent public transport network. Those elsewhere are not.
  In other words, this whole disparity in funding is self-perpetuating. If London transport breaks, then it will genuinely hit London’s businesses, and that in turn will hit the national economy and the national Treasury. The capital is addicted to transport spending, and the country needs the capital.
  The people who make the decisions are almost entirely based in London. So yes, that’s probably a factor too.
  I’m not saying this is good. It’s very, very un-good. It’s deeply, ludicrously unfair that, because London is richer and more dependent on public transport, that means it gets the lion’s share of funding forever more. It’s crazy.