To wonder what makes an area “posh”?

[NotCure172]

Just came back from a friend’s house in a very leafy suburb of West Midlands city. She loves talking about how posh it is where lives but I asked her what does it mean to live in a posh area? How do you know it’s posh? She couldn’t really answer my question and the area was very average.

How do you define a “posh” area?

It’s all relative.

My neighbours, when they moved in from a much rougher part of town, said they could tell our area is really posh because no one is walking around the streets drinking cans of lager in the morning

Here in Nottingham they closed the Waitrose. Condemned us to years of non-poshness at a stroke 🤣

They closed our Waitrose in Shrewsbury, too. Greggs has moved into the former Waitrose premises because their previous shop was too small to cope with demand.

I tend to think of big houses, well set back from the road with lots of green spaces around.

However for some I’ve met it means:

Not a council estate.
No antisocial behaviour.
No ‘under’ class living there.
Nothing considered ‘common’ in the garden (old furniture, rubbish bags, hot tub).
No HMO’s, no ‘half way’ inmate housing, no housing association or disabled care homes.

People can be quite sneery about the area I grew up in, which has most of the above. I did feel more ‘connected’ to the community there than the ‘posh’ area I now live in now though. Everyone would look out for each other and people tended to not try to annoy each other too much.

Goodness, that mosaic thing is creepily accurate about the village I live in,

I looked up the most deprived post codes and put them in that link, it says:
"Pocket Pensions
Penny-wise elderly singles renting in developments of compact social homes".

The postcode is from the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) which was most recently updated in September 2019.

The IMD is the official measure of deprivation in England. The IMD combines information about seven different types of deprivation to produce an overall relative measure of deprivation.

And yet somehow the area doesn't sound so bad when put through the link. That link can make living in poverty and the worst deprivation sound like you are just living a frugal life!

My postcode is apparently metro high flyers. Career minded 20 and 30 somethings renting apartments in highly commutable areas of major cities. Well that is quite accurate except we own our flat

@sophienelisse

And trees on the street. Preferably blossom.

Agree.

DH and I were trying to work out what made an area look nice or not and a lot of it was about trees and greenery.

We apparently are alpha families or contemporary upstarts depending on whether I put in my postcode or the one the computer thinks I'm at. It's pretty posh (Waitrose, independent coffee shop, up market tap rooms, but we have Lidl and home bargains too! We have a marina with very nice yachts in it not 50m away so lots of yachy types, my neighbour is the lifeboat coxswain)

Haslemere is posh. There’s an Aga shop on the high street.

I tried that link and it was way off. The only thing it got right was a new build but the rest didn’t represent the area at all 😬

Tree lined roads are usually a good indicator in whether an area is posh or not.

In London, on New Years Day morning, I'd be walking my dog past empty 2 litre White Lightning bottles, empty cans and pools of vom. Moved here, first New Years Day, an empty champagne bottle lying in the road was the sole sign of earlier celebration. I'd definitely moved upmarket.

If it's somewhere like London, the houses are still houses and not converted into tiny shoebox flats with black mould.

People have composting bins.

Nearest supermarket is a Waitrose.

Lower % of people who work, because they have plenty of passive wealth to live off. So you're more likely to see people pottering around during the day.

I just looked up our old postcode where we owned a small flat and had to regularly dodge fights spilling out of the local pub and step over junkies to reach our door. Metro high flyers apparently! To be fair we moved about 10 years ago I assume it’s gentrified in the last decade.

Lower % of people who work

But this applies to deprived areas too?

Posh = Greenery . Gardens, parks, big trees on the street.

Lots of greenery and space between dwellings. A posh area is also well-kept. If someone is walking a dog then posh area - cockerpoo, spaniel, Labrador. If rough area it will be a Staffy, Husky or pug.

Poor shops- nail bars and charity shops
Posh- "artisan"/vegan cafes

The Mosaic postcode link pp shared is quite interesting!

@MephistophelesApprentice

When the cheapest chicken shop is Nando's.

I think Nando's means gentrification and is therefore not posh at all

'Nando's means gentrification'? Please explain further.

@EvilGoldfish - yeah, tell that to the residents of somewhere like Chiswick! Not uncommon to see one half of a period semi with big gates, expensive cars and looking like it was renovated last week, while the other half has been divided up into bedsits and there is a sense of abandonment.

For me I think if the majority of kids attend private school on a street of detatched, and that area has a large proportion of such streets. Could be rural or more urban, congregated or spread out. Every area has a variety of housing, income and family types and can have nearby town centre or high street with MacD Nandos lidl waitrose etc or not.

@Fridafever

Plenty of McDonald’s near the queen phew!

That’s not plenty - much less than there used to be Victoria is being gentrified

*detatched or sizeable town houses

@rottiemott

I live near the queen Not a lot of MacDonald’s. Whitehall if she pops down the mall

There's one on Victoria street

There are not that many McDonald’s in central London-

There's loads. What are you classing as many?

Less than there used to be? Less than Leon’s

@DigitusImpudicus

I did the link, it says of my area: "Uptown Elite - High status households owning elegant homes in accessible inner suburbs where they enjoy city life in comfort"

Could someone enter in a known deprived area post code and see what it says?

yesterday my 18 year old DS did come home and tell me that he'd walked too close to a man "wearing a hoodie" and the man said "Fuck off" to my son. My DS then realised that the man was peeing, DS was so surprised at that scene he actually said "Sorry! I didn't know you were peeing!" 😂

I think we live very sheltered lives but I wouldn't say we are "posh"

what link is thsi? seems to have been deleted