PalenQ

I've heard that Swiss Cottage and St Johns Wood areas are places where many Americans have residences and that some streets look like american suburbs?

I am scheduling a look at this area next trip to London - any guidance on where i would find the most American like street scapes, or am i wrong?

thanks

walkinaround

i'm not sure what you mean by 'american street scapes'. a large american population does not mean the streets look american....and they don't.

if you want american street scapes, try croydon (ikea general area) which has some drags that look like typical american suburbia....miles of very large superstores, etc. easily mistaken for the outskirts of houston. i think there are not too many areas in the uk that have such an authentic american look.

janisj

&quot;<i>I've heard that Swiss Cottage and St Johns Wood areas are places where many Americans have residences and that some streets look like american suburbs?</i>&quot;

Who did you &quot;hear&quot; this from? Just silly - they don't look like any US suburb I've ever seen . . . . . .

PatrickLondon

We don't have many, if any, places like the American suburbs we see on TV (but, then, does America?), if only because land is much more expensive, so we don't have lots of open space around our houses, and we tend to prefer to have enclosed boundaries on the street frontage. Far more of our houses are terraced (=row houses) or semi-detached.

W9London

No. Swiss Cottage and SJW won't look like an American suburb. They just look like another posh residential neighbourhoods.

Yes. there are lots of Americans, esp corporate expats because A) American School is close by, and B) their employers are paying the rents (GBP1500+ per week).

If you want to see spoiled American brats, hang around at Starbucks on SJW high street around 3-4pm weekdays during the school terms. Or see their mothers at Panzers deli/grocery shops.

Swiss Cottage is not really exclusively American. You'll see other clusters in South Hampstead (quite popular for American singles).

Cholmondley_Warner

Go to your record collection. Take out Abbey Rd by the Beatles. Look at it. You have now seen St John's Wood.

The only place that I am aware of in Britain that was designed on American lines is Milton Keynes. It's a souless place where you can feel your will to live seeping away by the minute. So I suppose it's close enough.

Robespierre

<i>their employers are paying the rents (GBP1500+ per week).</i>

<u>Twelve Thousand Dollars per month???!!!</u>

Unbelievable.

Cholmondley_Warner

And it ain't THAT nice.

Kate

Yep, easy. But these are posh houses in a posh neighbourhood in one of the world's most expensive cities. Paying 12 grand a month is hardly compulsory...

PalenQ

OK - thanks - Swiss Cottage is just another upscale part of London - though an American enclave or sorts except for snotty Yankee kids at Starbucks it does not have an American feel.

Perhaps i was judging by what someone told me about High Wycombe, another American enclave - military mainly i believe where i believe there are American style neighborhoods with lawns, etc. Or am i deluded again? Not that i care to go to High Wycombe.

In Orleans France last year i drove thru an American residence area where streets were lined by stand along houses surrounded by lawns - just like in America. It was purposely built for American military brass following WWII - so i may have expected something like that.

PatrickLondon

There are indeed various new estates (of &quot;executive homes&quot; usually), where there are American-style patches of lawns without fencing, and High Wycombe and towns like it would be one of the places I'd expect to see them. But land values are such that it would be the rare exception that would really look like America.

walkinaround

the neighbourhoods of 'executive homes' that patrick refers to are very popular. they are hardly rare exceptions. they are going up everywhere!

Pete_R

What Patrick describe sounds like any suburban estate built in the last 30 years in the non-London parts of the country. They still don't look like American though, different styles of house, closer together, different style of garden...

Just like anywhere you get bits reminiscent of elsewhere. A few roads down from my house there is a cul-de-sac that my (American) wife thinks looks like an American street. Mainly, I think, because it is made up of detached bungalows with porches.

I think the only place you'll find a real &quot;little America&quot; is on one of the big American airbases.

flanneruk

I'm not sure what you're looking for, but:

- Welwyn Garden City and Letchworth are both roughly contemporary with the earliest American mass-market garden suburbs. Though more densely populated than their Pennsylvania or Noo Joisy peers, they're interestingly similar.
- The big US bases like Mildenhall and Lakenheath don't seem, driving by, to have characteristically US housing on them, though there are some interestingly American shapes in things like pickup trucks and piza joints.
- There are a few open lawn estates that don't feel at all American. Round London, Holly Lodge (http://hle.org.uk/) is a rather quirky 1920s twist on the theme, and there's a more American-like place off Swains Lane (the street that runs past Highgate Cemetery) but I've forgotten what it's called: outside, places like Port Sunlight near Liverpool pull a similar trick, but google London Garden Suburbs for a wide range of similar places.
- The only conscious attempt to mimic an American open-lawn community I know (the others inspired, or at any rate predated, what we now think of as typical Americans) is the mid-60s Sandford Park in Charlbury, in the Cotswolds. Slightly smaller lawns than in the US, and the English determination to put bedding plants everywhere does add a rather odd twist. 10 mins from the railway station: ignore the &quot;no entry&quot; signs.

PalenQ

Thanks for all the replies. Flanner thanks for all the details - i'll be looking around Holly Lodge for sure and maybe the Chartley Cotswold thing as i want to take the Cotswolds train line from Oxford sometime again.