On the day a research report confirms what we've been resigned to for yonks, that 2 in 5 of us are priced out of first time homeowning in our capital, a news report about empty council houses in Lambeth Council rubs salt in our renter's wounds. Lambeth are accused of letting 845 Council properties languish untenanted despite a housing shortage, with a hefty 357 reportedly needing less than £5k's worth of work done on......

Who’s the first performer that comes to mind when you think “Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday bash”? Amy Winehouse? Right, us neither. London housing prices fell by 0.5% in April. Brilliant! At that rate, Londonist should be able to afford a home here around 2028. The deputy mayor for young people warns that there is no “magic solution” to the recent spate of violence among teens. No magic solution, perhaps, but let’s hope that other......

On New London Architecture's model of the capital, that is. The Cretaceous intruder is not alone. Spotting what architects would term 'interventions' on this map of present and future London is one of our favourite games. Across the Thames, we noticed a design flaw in the Olympic stadium. Now, Boris is enthusiastic about trees, but planting woodland on an athletics pitch is a little extreme. Still, at least it'll add a touch of iron-age......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 44. Neighbours So do you talk to your neighbours? Some of us do, some of us don’t. Some of us are polite but wouldn’t engage in a street party, some of us prefer to have the wonderful anonymity that London brings. Is being part of a community a good thing or a bad thing? Good......

2012 Games won't benefit locals, claims think tank Take that, Monaco - London now has the world's priciest homes Our Amy's up for three Ivor Novello gongs Lie detector software proves a nice little money-saver for south London council Russian heavyweights to square off at the High Court Which? reveals candidates for London Restaurant of the Year Image courtesy of Orhan* via the Londonist flickr group.......

For our latest installment of Housing for the World's Wealthiest, Londonist is proud to present Chelsea Barracks and its £1 billion design plan. Nick and Christian Candy, the brothers behind One Hyde Park, purchased the site with the Qatari government in January, and can boast of it being the UK's most expensive property deal. Sitting pretty between Sloane Square and the Thames with a view of the Royal Hospital, the development will include 638......

There’s nothing like an outing to Hackney to start the mind whirring about gentrification. And we can think of no surer way to start an argument than to wander into an unreformed East End boozer enthusing about all the new construction and upscale shops popping up in the neighbourhood. The term gentrification was actually born in Islington. It was coined in the 60s by sociologist Ruth Glass, who noticed the phenomenon of middle-class people......

Lunchbox Linford won't carry Olympic flame Yellow box rules for Jubilee Line platforms Affordable homes cheek by jowl with hordes of Sloanes Arsenal's earning loadsamoney New mothers urged to bank umbilical blood Art Deco Dream Home image courtesy of onionbagblogger via the Londonist flickr group.......

Mere days after warning us about 'white flight' and the perils of living in modern London, scribes at the Telegraph have had a volte-face, and declared their love for our flawed yet fantastic city with a special report on the top 10 property hotspots for 2008. First up on the list: well, colour us a shade of surprised blue - the Telegraph's only singled out the borough of Kensington and Chelsea, home to Notting......

One of London's more remarkable tower blocks has begun construction. Strata, also called the Electric razor for not unfathomable reasons, will soon begin to rise from a site just south of Elephant and Castle, reports skyscrapernews. The 147 m structure is wholly residential, with 399 apartments, a quarter of which are earmarked for social housing. This is no ordinary high-rise. At its summit, three huge wind turbines will set a green example visible for......

...that the government’s gone a bit loopy, actually. They are still banging on about developing the optimistically titled Thames Gateway region into some eco-wonderland filled with gainfully employed and happy eco-bunnies. Yvette Cooper was due to, er, ‘clarify’ exactly how this can be achieved and for how many spondulicks at a brainstorming forum today. Now Londonist knows that London needs a bit more housing, and is all for the creation of well budgeted, environmentally-friendly utopias......

The 2012 Olympic Games may seem a long way off, but the pressure is starting to mount on the proposed developments for East London. In addition to building a shiny new stadium, the Olympics is meant to be an opportunity to provide more jobs, improved transport, and 9,000 new homes (of which half will be low-cost). While the Overground is now servicing Stratford and due to hook up to the East London Line in......

‘Credit crunch’ is surely the front-runner for phrase of the year. The long and tortured story of how iffy loans turned into high-rated assets and then turned into dust has been well-covered elsewhere. But has it affected anybody other than City bankers and the head of Merrill Lynch? The way to tell if the crunch has really trickled down to street level is to find out if people who previously had little trouble getting......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 24. Llamas As Team Nice and the Niceties Campaign is a year old, last week we spoke of niceties tokens, which is the mechanism that started Team Nice. So this week I thought I would speak a little bit more about Team Nice. Team Nice is an ever-growing group of people (currently just under 1,000)......

Some new research has been published claiming that Elephant and Castle will become a top retail destination in the next 10 years. Now, we're as optimistic as the next blog, as demonstrated by our views on the 2012 Olympic logo. But, even for us, this seems quite a stretch. While the odd stall outside the shopping centre adds a bit of character to the place, the centre itself is a bit of a dive......

Our Ken’s been getting a little hot under the collar of late – what with tubes strikes aplenty and London landscape controversies, lest we forget the fast tick-tock till election day – the time has never proved more ripe to woo the electorates of his London. The latest in Ken’s bid for our affection? Cheap housing! Yep, angered by what he perceives as individual councils aligning themselves against the acquisition and distribution of affordable......

The fourth in our series of interviews with potential candidates for next year's Mayoral election. Previously: Victoria Borwick (Tory), Andrew Boff (Tory) and Warwick Lightfoot (Tory). Sian Berry is the Green's candidate for next year's elections. Unlike the Tory rivals we've previously interviewed, she is a strong supporter of the congestion charge. She's the only person we've ever known to use the words 'The North London Line is good'. And she's also got a......

A day after possibly the strongest entry for the most risible right-wing attempt at 'humour' since Jim Davidson was allowed near prime time television, Boris Johnson emerged from his summer holidays (it's silly season all year round for him really) and set out his stall for taking on Ken Livingstone next May. And what a stall it is. Thrill to his delight at being able to buy mango juice in newsagents! Listen to his boast......

New figures released yesterday show, well, they show that London is pretty much doing what it always does: changing. Quite how is not entirely apparent. The newspapers managed to get some headline footage out of the statistics – the Daily Mail even ran a story about the UK population across the whole of the front page. And of course, there is some stuff to report. Most significantly, shedsful of Londoners are upping camp and shipping......

Fire! Fire! Set phones to vibrate. It's sex education via text message. Ups and downs in the London housing market. You pretend not to care, but you do really. Jennifer Ellison returns to the West End. You genuinely don't care. More Tube strikes look likely. Sorry to rant from a position of complete ignorance but, guys, just accept redundancy like the rest of us have to when our companies fuck up, rather than taking......

Chicagoist is gearing up for this weekend's annual Air & Water Show along the lakefront. In what's becoming an annual tradition around there, staff member Todd McClamroch even got to fly with one of the participants. Chicagoist's decidedly opinionated readership was also appalled that one of their staffers found a popular local brewpub to be a great place to bring a kid. They also think that an unlikely activist for immigration rights should just take......

They’re rehousing their residents in some pretty odd places, that lot at Wandsworth Council. In an impressive initiative called Hidden Homes, the chief bods of this creative borough are re-evaluating all their abandoned nooks and crannies, coal holes and closets to see if they can be reclaimed, redesigned and refurbished. There are many redundant corners to most council estates – stores and community facilities which are no longer in use. These are not only......

The third of our interviews with the Tory candidates for London Mayor. Previously, Victoria Borwick and Andrew Boff. Warwick Lightfoot has, no doubt, spent a lifetime tolerating jibes about his Tolkeinesque name. He's also acquired an outstanding CV that includes stints as Mayor of Kensington and Chelsea, Special Advisor to the Chancellor and 20 years experience as a councillor. Most impressively of all, he's the first Tory candidate to admit to vomiting on the......

If you’re looking for a new place to live, and want to live more greenly at the same time, Londonist has discovered the perfect tool to help you: Walk Score. A cunning twist on Google Maps, give it a postcode and it’ll calculate how many useful things, such as shops, restaurants, cinemas, schools and parks, are within a mile of your house. Meaning you can use your car less, get fitter, save money and......

Four Tories want to be our next Mayor. We contacted each of them to see where they stand on London's most pressing issues. And, of course, whether they've ever been sick on the Tube. Andrew Boff was the first to return answers. As Mayor, the Boffmeister would shrink the Boroughs, remove the C-charge...and use Second Life instead of the airports? Where do you live in London and what do you like best about it?......

A new campaign has launched today and good luck to the plucky folk literally camping outside City Hall. The latest housing campaign by London Citizens, the group responsible for the Living Wage Campaign, is a call for housing co-operatives to be built on land held in common ownership. 50 tents and hundreds of campaigners from the diverse range of community groups, faith groups and local resident groups involved are currently occupying Potters Field next......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 11. Marmite And Socialism Who feels comfortable about talking politics? The people that I know fall into two categories… Some people don't really feel comfortable talking about politics, particularly with people they don't know. This is not because they are worried that they will offend them (the 'never talk about politics, religion or money' rule)......

This is not another article about the high cost of living in London, though it has great relevance to the silly prices of houses inside the M25. All of that is well documented elsewhere - we're far more eager to devote screenspace to sensible, affordable and frankly brilliant ways to get by in this city without compromising your cool. Camelot Property Protection have been featured in today's Telegraph for their clever way of pleasing......

Unless you’ve had your head buried in the sand since Blair morphed into Brown, the government has now put housing at the forefront of the political agenda, having realised that the current lack of residential units being built is totally inadequate. At the frontline of this campaign is the need to build more homes in brown-field sites in our cities so that we can edge towards those housing targets of about 200,000 a year.......

After a surprisingly quick public inquiry, a new skyscraper for the City of London has been approved. Called "the Walkie Talkie" by nickname lovers thanks to its distinctive appearance, the 160 metre tall building will be replacing a 100 metre 1960s tower currently on the site. The building proposals had been called in by the then Secretary of State for Communities, Ruth Kelly, after concerns were voiced by UNESCO at the increasing number of......