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Europe is seeing the gradual shift of its manufacturing core southwards - the so-called 'hot banana'

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Few inhabitants of the world's biggest megacity have any idea of its existence, or of its name. Stretching from Manchester to Milan, the Blue Banana is home to around 100 million people. This is the true Heart of Europe.

That heart is as movable and disputable as the definition of Europe itself. The geographic center of the European Union has been moving steadily eastward, as the political project has been expanding in that direction (see # 498). Delimiting Europe's civilizational core is as debatable as the declarations of 'otherness' that are used to define it (see # 22).

More recently, cities and regions that have marketed themselves as the 'Heart of Europe' include places as far apart as Berlin and Brussels, the Czech Republic and Romania. But the true heart of Europe - looking at cold, hard economic and demographic data - has a much more definite circumscription, at least according to Roger Brunet, the French geographer who in 1989 revealed the existence of the Blue Banana.

That spatial concept described the until then nameless megalopolis straddling the European continent, stretching from the industrial cities in the northwest of England to their counterparts in the northern part of Italy, also including densely populated, highly industrialised areas in the Benelux countries, France, Germany and Switzerland.

The northern terminus of the Blue Banana is located around Manchester and Birmingham, takes in the densely populated southeast of England (including of course London), then jumps across the Channel to include a few high-density areas that already have collective names, such as the Randstad (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and other urban centers on the western edge of the Netherlands), the Flemish Diamond (Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent) and the Ruhr Metropolis (Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Cologne, etc.)

The Banana bends southwards along the Rhine, including Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Switzerland before reaching northern Italian powerhouses such as Milan, Turin and Genoa.Measuring between 1,500 and 1,700 kilometers between its northwestern and southeastern termini, the Blue Banana is home to between 90 and 110 million people (out of a total of 730 million for all of Europe).

It includes major seaports such as Rotterdam and Antwerp (#1 and #2 in Europe, both in the world top 20); airport hubs like Heathrow, Frankfurt and Schiphol (#3, #11 and #14 in the world); and the Hqs of the European Union, the European Parliament, the International Court of Justice, NATO and the European Central Bank.

In population size, it outnumbers the 85-million-strong Taiheiyo Belt, stretching from Tokyo to Fukuoka in Japan, and thus could be construed as the largest First World agglomeration in the world - the Ganges River agglomeration is greater, but is not as economically prominent as the Blue Banana. So, on a global level, Europe's core zone can arguably said to comprise the world's largest concentration of people, industry, money and economic power.

Brunet's aim had been to delineate the economically most developed region within Europe, but the catchy name was not his invention. As he later reminisced, "The name was added by the media: the banana shape was pointed out at a press-conference by Jacques Chérèque, a government minister; the color was then given to it by an artist at the Nouvel Observateur, in an article by Josette Alia three days later which baptised the banane bleue."

The color was later interpreted as a reference to the blue on the European flag, or to the blue collars of the factory workers' uniforms. Spontaneous though it was, the term's simplicity and memorability helped Brunet's concept gain wide recognition. The 'blue banana' became popular currency among economists, europhiles, and other commentators - much more so than the region's alternative names (Hot Banana, Bluemerang, European Backbone, Manchester-Milan Axis and others).

The Blue Banana is more than a geographer's whim. It is the result of a beneficial set of circumstances, that include a temperate climate, fertile soil on the plains and a variety of mineral resources. Long processes such as the emergence of trade routes, improvements in agriculture, the development of industry and advancements in science culminated in the 19th century, when the region was a global powerhouse of industry, finance and science. Even though the Blue Banana, like much of the rest of the developed world, has now moved into a postindustrial phase, the region remains a major economic center.

Brunet's definition of Europe's economic core pointedly excluded Paris and other French conurbations, as a critique of French economic insularity. Brunet wanted his spatial concept to convince French authorities of the necessity of greater economic integration with the European core. According to Brunet, France had lost this connection to Europe's economic heartland in the 17th century, when it expelled the Huguenots - a protestant sect with a penchant for doing business.

As a concept, the Blue Banana's main asset is that it allows those involved to transcend the narrow national boundaries that, decades after the start of European integration, still define the mental space inhabited by most European citizens. The Blue Banana makes it easier to see Europe's economic, demographic, cultural and political evolutions in a wider, regional framework.

But it is unlikely the Citizens of the Blue Banana will ever unite and rise up to fight for a common cause. Like other megalopolises, it is the favorite tool of planners and think tanks. Especially if they are French: the BosWash - America's urban corridor, stretching from Boston over New York and Baltimore to Washington DC - is a term popularised in 1961 by Jean Gottman, another French geographer.

The Blue Banana, meanwhile, may have been doomed by its own success. The term proved so popular (again, mainly with planners and think tanks) that adjacent regions started to market themselves as part of the same spatial concept, thus diluting its strength - later models even included Paris, while the original point was to exclude the French capital.

Other regions have developed their own banana concept, including the Mediterranean arc (the so-called Golden Banana), the Scandinavian banana, the Alpine Furrow, etcetera. The opening up of Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism has exposed other corridors of economic dynamism, such as the Danube basin, or one stretching from Paris over Berlin to Warsaw.

Today, the Blue Banana model is no longer accurate: the former conurbations have grown several new branches, and the last few years have seen so much expansion that one might speak of a Blue Star - although the Blue Banana remains at its core. As it turns out, the Blue Banana is as moveable a feast as that Heart of Europe itself.
Image of the Blue Banana produced by Arnold Platon, licensed for reproduction under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, found here on Wikimedia Commons. Strange Maps #695 Got a strange map? Let me know at strangemaps@gmail.com.

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The Blue Banana - the True Heart of Europe

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Few inhabitants of the world's biggest megacity have any idea of its existence, or of its name. Stretching from Manchester to Milan, the Blue Banana is home to around 100 million people. This is the true Heart of Europe. That heart is as movable and disputable as the definition of Europe itself.

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WALK after dark past some of the immaculately maintained white stucco houses in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and automatic security lights all click on at the same time: a sign that many of their owners are absent. A lot of these residences, which have an average price of £2m ($2.7m) and can reach ten times that, have foreign owners or belong to Britons with other homes. The glitz of one of London's wealthiest boroughs features in "Made in Chelsea", a TV series about the leisured lives of the brash, expensively heeled denizens of "K and C".

But the borough, which stretches from rich enclaves in the south near the King's Road to more mixed housing in the north near Grenfell Tower, the site of a horrific late-night fire on June 14th that killed at least 79 people, has revived memories of a much older yarn. "A Tale of Two Cities", Charles Dickens's 19th-century novel, charted the fates of the rich and poor in London and Paris before the French Revolution. These days, Emma Dent Coad, the recently elected Labour MP for Kensington, rails against "extreme gentrification" and highlights the divisions of wealth and opportunity in a way that Dickens himself might have recognised. "The poor are getting poorer," she says. "Their income is dropping...there is no trickledown here." And indeed, the area around Grenfell Tower is home to some of the poorest people in the country (see map).

Income differentials in the borough are certainly startling. The average (mean) salary is £123,000 ($156,000), among the highest in Britain. But the median (the point which half the population is above and half below) is just £32,700 ($41,400). The gap between the two, one of the widest in the country, reflects the gulf between earnings at the very top and the very bottom. Since the Grenfell Tower blaze, worries over inequality in the borough have become more widespread than in the usual leftist campaign speeches. Ms Dent Coad reports that many previous Tory voters have told her that they too are concerned about widening social rifts.

Unlike the banlieues (suburbs) of Paris, London's social housing has traditionally been woven into the fabric of the city. The blackened skeleton of Grenfell Tower now looks like an ugly scar in a landscape where cramped social housing sits but a few streets away from some of the grandest terraces in London. The northern part of the borough is a hotch-potch of neat streets and tower blocks, where recently arrived migrants are housed alongside low-earning Britons. The first death announced at Grenfell was of Mohammed Alhajali, a Syrian refugee.

A summer of discontent

Talk to those at the scene of the disaster and a recurrent theme is that this has been a summer of shocks. It began with the election on June 8th, which saw Ms Dent Coad overturn a large Tory majority. Previously "K and C" had ranked as an unbreachable Tory citadel and a byword for urbane Conservatism, represented by such prominent MPs as the late Alan Clark, a political diarist, and Michael Portillo, a former defence secretary. Yet Labour's national surge combined with tactical voting by opponents of Brexit. The overall result was that Victoria Borwick, the sitting Tory MP and firm backer of Brexit, lost by 20 votes to Ms Dent Coad, after three recounts.

The fire and its death toll have made that drama seem a minor disruption. Jan Crowden, a volunteer worker, says the incident "told us what we've known for a long time: that the inequalities here are glaring and that many people simply did not want to know". She cites Elgin Crescent, with its expensive delicatessens, and the paltry offerings in supermarkets close to the Grenfell Tower, as signs that "people live very close, but in different worlds. Their kids don't go to the same schools and their parents would never meet if it weren't for what is happening now."

Not everyone thinks the caricature of heartless rich alongside forgotten poor is a fair one. Local people have rallied to help those affected by the fire, offering sleeping space, emergency food and welfare arrangements, as well as therapy and legal support (essential because the Conservative-run local council was heavily criticised for its response to the fire: its chief executive later resigned).

Joanne Cash, a barrister and former prospective Tory candidate who lives near Grenfell Tower, says the mood is of "real anger" about inept handling of the fire's aftermath. But she insists the community is more closely woven than critics claim. "Yes, this is a place with rich and poor people, largely because house prices have risen so fast in the past two decades. But it isn't really full of absentee oligarchs. People use the local leisure centre together; the Notting Hill carnival is rooted here. There has always been variety and diversity of people and that has been its strength."

A cultural battle is now under way over the significance of the tragedy and the responses to it. A "day of rage" march by far- left protesters on June 21st linked calls for justice for the Grenfell victims with demands to overthrow the Tory government. But the local "Love Golborne" community website riposted that "Grenfell residents are totally opposed...(and) do not want their grief hijacked."

Whatever else happens to the story as blame is apportioned, the tale of two cities in contemporary London retains painful resonances with the one Dickens wove into a tapestry of social discontent in London and Paris. One of his villains, the wealthy Marquis St Evrémonde, has his carriage driven recklessly, killing the child of a French peasant. He throws a coin to the child's father to compensate him, but it is thrown back, unleashing a quest for vengeance and justice that spans the English Channel and links together previously separate characters. In the febrile mood of an apprehensive city after Grenfell, the echoes are hard to ignore.

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Kensington and Chelsea: a wealthy but deeply divided borough

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WALK after dark past some of the immaculately maintained white stucco houses in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and automatic security lights all click on at the same time: a sign that many of their owners are absent.

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Wealth and poverty sit side by side in Grenfell Tower’s borough

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Data shows area around Grenfell Tower was among top 10% most deprived areas in England in 2015

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With its elegant houses daubed in pastel shades, designer boutiques, antique shops and art galleries, Portland Road lies at the heart of David Cameron country.

At The Cross, cashmere dressing gowns cost £400.

Three doors along, model Kelly Brook and young Royals dine on lobster risotto and herb-crusted lamb at Julie's restaurant, just a stone's throw from the homes of Nicole Kidman, Jason Donovan and Matt LeBlanc.

Yet while the street on the edge of Notting Hill in West London appears to be one of the most exclusive in Britain, it is also the most divided.

While wealthy businessmen, lawyers and bankers head for Portland Road's chichi shops, just 600 yards away, behind black gates, lie Winterbourne House and Nottingwood House, sprawling red-brick Thirties estates for some of London's most socially deprived people.

Residents on the estates are also divided from their more privileged neighbours by a traffic safety barrier dubbed the Berlin Wall.

The contrast is summed up by the house prices. Last year, 22 Portland Road, a five-bedroom semi with Bulthaup kitchen and private cinema, sold for £6 million. At the other end, Flat 14 at Winterbourne House fetched a more modest £244,000.

The extraordinary story is revealed in a BBC documentary series that used a deprivation map - drawn up by Kensington and Chelsea Council in 2007 - to show that in Portland Road, some of the richest people in Britain are living side by side with some of the poorest.

It is a situation unparalleled throughout contemporary Britain.

Author Neil Hegarty, who co-wrote the book that accompanies the BBC series, said: 'Portland Road has the most jarring of juxtapositions because those in the wealthiest five per cent and the poorest five per cent of London's population live at opposite ends of the same road.'

Elpida Georgiou, an artist and mother of two who lives on the Winterbourne House estate, said: 'We have to walk by those very affluent houses every day, which is a constant reminder of how poor we are. It's things like that that chip away at your spirit.'

Built on a strip of wasteland during the 1850s housing boom, Portland Road was sandwiched between the exclusive Georgian and Victorian mansions of Notting Hill's Ladbroke Estate to the east, and the downmarket Norland Estate - home to the 'Piggeries and Potteries', London's most squalid gypsy camp - to the west.

When philanthropist Charles Booth created his poverty map of the capital in 1886, colour-coding the streets, he categorised the Ladbroke Estate as yellow - 'upper-middle class, servant-keeping class'. The area to the west was black - 'as deep and dark a type as anywhere in London...the lowest class of labourers, street sellers, loafers and criminals. Their life is the life of savages.'

Portland Road's history is epitomised by No 157. When George Andrews was born there in 1935, he lived with his parents and five siblings in two rooms on the ground floor.

'The road was a slum but it was where we lived,' said Mr Andrews, now a 77-year-old father of three and grandfather of five.

'Two people lived on the floor above us, and at the top was an old soldier. We all shared the same toilet and a tin bath. The rent was 12s 6d a week for each family - the equivalent of 65p.

'When we moved out of 157, it was gutted and suddenly it became a lovely house.'

Tim and Penny Hicks bought the property in 1968 for £11,750 after George's parents were rehoused. They were among the first of a new wave of settlers. Mr Hicks said: 'We were living in Chelsea and had too many children and a tiny house. We wandered down here and thought it may be a good place because it's off Holland Park Avenue, which has always been pleasant. But this road was pretty grotty in those days.'

His wife added: 'We took a chance that the area was going to go up. My mother wasn't pleased. She couldn't understand why we wanted to leave Chelsea and come here but I'm glad we did.'

Her hopes about the area improving came true - in 2006, the house next door to the family was sold for £1.5 million.

A traffic barrier was erected by the council in 1975. Residents at the Holland Park end felt more secure - cut off from the estate to the north - and house prices eventually soared. Businessmen and bankers moved in.

In contrast, the council estate residents feel as alienated as East Berliners did before the fall of the Wall.

The Secret History Of Our Streets will be shown on BBC2 at 9pm on June 6.

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Is this the UK's most divided street? From £6m homes to estates with some of the country's most deprived families. It even has its own 'Berlin Wall'

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With its elegant houses daubed in pastel shades, designer boutiques, antique shops and art galleries, Portland Road lies at the heart of David Cameron country. At The Cross, cashmere dressing gowns cost £400. Three doors along, model Kelly Brook and young Royals dine on lobster risotto and herb-crusted lamb at Julie's restaurant, just a stone's throw from the homes of Nicole Kidman, Jason Donovan and Matt LeBlanc.

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They say hindsight is a wonderful thing, but that rather presupposes that the insight that it gives you is beneficial. If all it reveals is how you missed out by the narrowest of margins, then it's just a drag, isn't it? I occasionally drive past the area of east London where my aunt had a four-storey house. She got old and the house was a bit run-down. It seemed that the best option was to sell it. Who knew then that within just a few years, money would flow in to the vicinity. Bankers, monied types who work in the City, love big houses and don't want a vile commute, turned up and tuned in. The Windrush generation, who bought those houses in the 1960s and 70s by scrimping and saving, sold up to them and moved out. Then the artist cavalcade stopped by. An area for so long seen as urban and edgy became desirable and trendy, and increasingly expensive. Such is gentrification.

I thought about the process the other day when I learned that some of the undesirable streets close to where I grew up are now being marketed by the estate agents as a "village". Estate agents: they have hindsight and foresight. If they say it is a village, soon it could be.

This diversity/gentrification debate flares at this time every year as the floats and parades and revellers arrive in Notting Hill for the carnival. Notting Hill, once a tremendously deprived area - home to a poor white working class and cash-poor black arrivees - has seen seismic change. The Notting Hill set, as they are known - think Cameron, Gove, Osborne - run the country.

Thus, every year, the carnival hits the streets, as it has for almost half a century. Every year, relative newcomers who hate the carnival hit the road to spend bank-holiday weekend elsewhere. A few moan to the papers.

According to the Times, Michelle de Swarte, a model turned TV presenter, amused the Edinburgh festival last week with her personal experience of gentrification. She grew up on an estate in Brixton. "I was desperate to leave. Now I realise I don't have the money to move back," she said. Learn from my mistake was her message to minority inhabitants of places urban and edgy. "Don't move. Wait until the white people come and want brunch."

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What Notting Hill carnival reveals about gentrification and diversity | Hugh Muir

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They say hindsight is a wonderful thing, but that rather presupposes that the insight that it gives you is beneficial. If all it reveals is how you missed out by the narrowest of margins, then it's just a drag, isn't it? I occasionally drive past the area of east London where my aunt had a four-storey house.

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How neighborhood inequality leads to higher crime rates

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Increasing inequality has been linked to rising violent crime rates, but what about property crime? In new research which examines property crime by Census block groups in three US cities, Neil Met...