Chances are, you’ve seen Croydon in a film or TV show without even realizing it. London’s largest borough — home to roughly 400,000 residents — has fooled audiences into thinking it was Istanbul in American Assassin and Gotham City in The Dark Knight Rises, and in the Amazon MGM Studios action movie Heads of State released over the summer, viewers were transported to Eastern Europe.
There are good reasons for this high visibility. Croydon’s urban landscape of modernist towers and concrete overpasses (plus some leafy suburbs) makes it an effective urban chameleon, while it is also close to the major film studios used by Hollywood producers. But despite its popularity as a location for urban filming, Croydon tends to fly under the radar in London, a low- to middle-income area that’s often derided as a peripheral afterthought. Once branded one of the least desirable places to live in the UK, its glory days as a commercial, innovation and financial hub have been eroded by time and a series of financial challenges.