From LondonNet:
Bloomsbury, Holborn and St Giles are set to be grouped together under the title "Midtown" in a bid to raise the profile of an area sometimes seen as the boring bit in the middle of the West End and The City.
"It is so central and yet so ignored," said Tass Mavrogordato, CEO of InHolborn, a group campaigning for investment in the zone, which has now been handed the backing of London Mayor Boris Johnson. "The problem is that New Oxford Street is just so horrible, there is no major retail street and it serves mainly as a transport corridor."
The way to get around those snags, according to InHolborn, is for the many business based in the area to chip in to a central pot, worth many millions of pounds, from which funds would be used to spruce things up and forge that elusive sense of identity.
Forgive me, but is Bloomsbury not a name that positively vibrates with identity born of rich historical associations? Doesn't Holborn have evocative links with Dickens and a brand of rolling tobacco? Doesn't St Giles have a notable church? Can re-branding these places really make them stand out more? Yet there's already a Midtown Business Club with which InHolborn has links.
Perhaps it makes economic sense, but I can't imagine any number 38 I ever ride on going through a place call "Midtown" en route to Victoria. And should I ever encounter a marketing concept of that name, I fear I will simply avert my gaze.
