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Every year, Time Out puts out feelers to our team of on-the-ground writers and editors around the world in the name of deciding which city neighbourhoods are the planet’s coolest. The insight and expertise of Time Out’s global editors then whittles down the selection and ranks them according to the quality of stuff like food, drink, arts, culture, street life and community.
We just published this year’s ranking of the Coolest Neighbourhoods in the World – and, as always, a London ’hood made the cut. Repping the capital this year is Leyton.
The east London neighbourhood placed 24th overall (out of 38), sandwiched between Buenos Aires’s Chacarita (at 23) and Dublin’s Inchicore (at 25). Time Out contributor Matt Blake praised Leyton’s growing food scene, lively nightlife and ‘wealth of proper boozers’, also calling out Francis Road as the area’s ‘main drag’.
Blake also said: ‘There’s also a handful of gorgeous hidden green gems, from parks to community-growing gardens.
‘A steady stream of young, middle-income families have recently moved to Leyton, but with them has come a quiet breath of new life that enhances rather than sacrifices the neighbourhood’s identity.’
All of which won’t likely be news to most Londoners. Leyton is a trendy place and has been in the spotlight in recent years for attracting residents from nearby Hackney and Walthamstow. As London’s coolest neighbourhood for 2024, Leyton joins recent victors King’s Cross (2023) and Walthamstow (2022).
Where’s cooler than Leyton, you ask? Topping our 2024 ranking was Marseille’s Notre-Dame-du-Mont (after all, pretty much everyone went to the French city this summer) and second was Mers Sultan in Casablanca. The highest-ranking UK neighbourhood was Bristol’s Stokes Croft and St Paul’s, which came sixth – read more about all the UK neighbourhoods in this year’s list here.
You can read more about Time Out’s Coolest Neighbourhoods for 2024 here.
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