Neighbourhood watch: your new capital destinations for 2019

Nine Elms

Where: The riverside between Battersea and Vauxhall

The numbers: A £15bn investment including 20,000 homes over 230 hectares.

Who’s involved: Five galleries already bracket the area. Damien Hirst’s Newport Street Gallery, the artist-run test bed Beaconsfield Gallery Vauxhall, Cabinet Gallery and the Pump House and lakeside visual arts space in Battersea Park. Michael Morpurgo, the author of War Horse, stages his play Mimi and the Mountain Dragon at Circus West Village at the foot of Battersea Power Station this month, and Anthea Hamilton installed a temporary augmented reality exhibition at the Grade II listed site for this year’s Art Night. The design of the new buildings for New Covent Garden Market alludes to the area’s historical asparagus and lavender fields.

Getting there: Two new Underground stations to be built at Nine Elms and Battersea Power Station are scheduled for completion in 2020, to be served by the Northern line as an extension from Kennington. Currently, Vauxhall Underground station provides the best access.

What to look forward to: Matt’s Gallery, which hosted Richard Wilson’s iconic oil-filled room artwork 20:50, will move to a new 9,000 square-foot home here next year. A new linear park will provide a green spine for the area stretching along the riverbank from the US Embassy, inspired by New York’s High Line and dotted with sculptures curated by Sir Norman Rosenthal.

What to say: With this many galleries nearby, let’s call it ‘the people’s Mayfair’.

What not to say: Didn’t Donald Trump call it an ‘off location’?

Meridian Water

Where: Enfield

The numbers: A £6bn, 20-year regeneration project of a former gasworks site including 10,000 homes over 35 hectares.

Who’s involved: Field Day ­— which attracts acts of the kilowattage of Aphex Twin, Erykah Badu, Patti Smith, Skepta and PJ Harvey — announced it would be hosting next year’s proceedings across a 10-acre space in four vast, interlinked warehouses, the largest of which will be the biggest warehouse venue for music in the capital (with a capacity of 7,500). Entertainment industry incubator Film London has visited to scout locations, while an unnamed US TV production company is reportedly looking for sites and buildings to film a major new TV series.

Getting there: Meridian Water station is expected to replace the nearby Angel Road, with access to London Liverpool Street in 20 minutes, and proposals for a Crossrail extension here are under consideration.

What to look forward to: ‘We want the next Tate, the next Pinewood Studios,’ says Nesil Caliskan, the Enfield council leader overseeing the development. Artist accommodation and workshops available for reasonable rents are part of the affordable homes prospectus. There will be new waterside vistas on the banks of the River Lea and Pymmes Brook and a new boulevard leading to the Lea Valley park.

What to say: It’ll be the Venice of north London.

What not to say: I liked it when it was just an Ikea.

East Bank

Where: Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Stratford

The numbers: A tasty £1.1 billion is to be invested in this portion of the former Olympic site, creating 2,500 jobs and bringing in an additional 1.5 million visitors per year. As its name suggests, it is intended to rival or at least complement cultural hubs such as the South Bank.

Who’s involved: The V&A East will feature a new museum and research centre partnering with the Smithsonian Institution, which will mount one in every four exhibitions. Sadler’s Wells East will open a 550-seat theatre. UAL’s London College of Fashion will integrate its six sites on to one campus here. UCL will create a new outpost, UCL East, while the BBC is building a state-of-the art music studio complex. West Ham play their home matches at the former Olympic Stadium (now London Stadium).

Getting there: The upgraded Stratford and Stratford International stations were the earliest concrete benefits of the Olympic legacy.

What to look forward to: A cultural resuscitation includes resiting 250,000 pieces of the V&A’s permanent collection to its new space, including the wooden ceiling from a destroyed 15th-century Spanish palace. The BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and BBC Singers will be making East Bank their home, while the BBC Concert Orchestra will also have a significant presence. Sadler’s Wells East will be home to the country’s first choreographic practice and hip-hop academy.

What to say: This is the capital’s exciting new Knowledge Quarter.

What not to say: Let’s catch the footie and get hammered.

Greenwich Peninsula

Where: North Greenwich

The numbers: An £8.4bn revamp of a 150-acre site on the Greenwich Peninsula, with 15,000 new homes and a permanent ‘Design District’ for 1,800 creatives.

Who’s involved: Jemima Burrill curates the Now Gallery, a contemporary art space that has hosted Molly Goddard, Richard Malone and Camille Walala exhibitions in the past year. Now shares a space, The Hub, with Craft London, the Tom Dixon-designed restaurant run by chef Stevie Parle. Sculptor Conrad Shawcross’s 49m aluminium The Optic Cloak abuts the Blackwall Tunnel approach, shrouding the flues of a low-carbon energy centre that will power every home in the area as Europe’s largest new-build heat network.

Getting here: The Zone 2 site is served by North Greenwich station, set to be rebuilt and renamed Greenwich Peninsula, and architect Santiago Calatrava’s dramatic Peninsula Place project above the station will be connected to the river by a new footbridge.

What to look forward to: The pedestrianised Design District is due to open in 2020. It will have artists’ studios spread across 16 buildings including a transparent market hall by Spanish architects SelgasCano, which created the oh-so-cool co-working space Second Home Spitalfields. The ‘Peninsula 5k’ will be a five-kilometre walkway snaking through the area’s galleries and along its two miles of Thames waterfront. Around 30,000 people flock to the annual Urban Village Fête at the start of every summer.

What to say: A new riverside district minutes from the city transforming former industrial land and gasworks around the O2.

What not to say: Isn’t that basically Essex?