Thousands of people pass within a hundred metres of you every day. Almost none of them cross York Way.

King's Cross

The older, smaller-grained half of a famous name, standing on the Islington side of York Way while the crowds gather on the other.

King's Cross lies across two boroughs, on either side of Euston Road, and the practical dividing line for what's actually here is York Way. The station, the goods yard and the whole of the King's Cross Central masterplan sit in Camden; the small part of that scheme that fell inside Islington's boundary, known as the Triangle Site, was initially refused planning permission by Islington Council. The Islington side is the Victorian street grid immediately east of York Way: independent cafes, restaurants and pubs, small workshop and studio businesses, hotels and serviced accommodation, offices and flexible workspace in converted industrial buildings, and everyday services for a dense residential population, running through Caledonia Street, Wharfdale Road, Killick Street and the courtyards of Regent Quarter.

That makes this the only one of Islington's sixteen localities that shares a name and a pavement with one of Britain's largest and most photographed regeneration schemes without being in it. Pentonville up the hill is an arterial road; Caledonian Road north is a struggling ribbon; Clerkenwell south-east is a design district. This is the only place whose defining commercial condition is standing right next to somebody else's success, close enough to see it and far enough to get none of the footfall.

That footfall is real and it is entirely oriented the other way, towards the squares, shops and canal basin on the Camden side. Nothing about being close gets you any of it, because nobody wanders east from a place designed to hold them. What works is being the specific answer to a specific question asked by someone already standing there: quieter, cheaper, better, older, open later, a table you can actually get, a workshop that will do the job by Friday. Proximity is not a strategy. Being findable at the moment of comparison is, and that is what we build for £49.99 a month.