2026-08-19
23 分钟This is The Guardian.
Today, on the ground in Brick Lane as a local community fights to stop a data centre.
Just before we start, just a warning that there is a racist insult included in this episode.
If you were making a list of the most iconic streets in London, Brick Lane would definitely be on it.
Someone who knows Brick Lane very well is Majida Chowdhury,
a young journalist and former Guardian intern who grew up here.
And on yet another boiling hot August day, she's offered to show Today in Focus producer Eleanor and I around.
Right in the heart of the East End, it's loud, it's busy.
It's a place where fabric shops and curry houses sit side by side with vintage pop-ups and cocktail bars.
And it's famously one of London's most multicultural and diverse neighbourhoods.
Majida was born in Brick Lane and lived here with her mum, siblings
and extended family until she was 11. Part of the British Bangladeshi community who've lived here since the 1950s.
You couldn't walk out the house without recognising someone that you know.
And she loved it.
So you'd walk through and you could like smell the sort of like...
The smell of curry, essentially, and then you would also hear people being like,
oh, come to my shop, come, come eat here, come eat here.
Like, you'd hear that a lot, and it was a very loud place, so I don't think it was ever quiet.
It sounds like a really happy place to grow up, then.
Oh, yeah, for me, definitely.