Picture of London in 1949

Looks like some early model hummers.

Everybody dressed decently and nobody holding a "will work for..." sign.

Google Maps Street View - Here is the view of that same spot today

You can see a Gap that occupies that front left building in the OP photo. Ripley's Believe It Or Not is across the street. There is a 5 Guys burgers a block over, and some random person is carrying a Whole Foods bag.

If you didn't know any better, you'd think it was the USA.

Let me see.....no mosques, no hijabs....sounds like a good place or a place at a good time

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Looks pretty neat. Grimy as hell too

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It certainly was "grimy" as most of london was powered by coal fired power plants that were in very close proximity to the city's center.

Pollution got so bad that they actually had a "Killer Smog" disaster in 1952



The Great Smog of London, or Great Smog of 1952, was a severe air-pollution event that affected the British capital of London in early December 1952. A period of cold weather, combined with an anticyclone and windless conditions, collected airborne pollutants—mostly arising from the use of coal—to form a thick layer of smog over the city. It lasted from Friday, 5 December to Tuesday, 9 December 1952 and then dispersed quickly when the weather changed.

It caused major disruption by reducing visibility and even penetrating indoor areas, far more severe than previous smog events experienced in the past, called "pea-soupers". Government medical reports in the following weeks, however, estimated that up until 8 December, 4,000 people had died as a direct result of the smog and 100,000 more were made ill by the smog's effects on the human respiratory tract. More recent research suggests that the total number of fatalities was considerably greater; about 6,000 more died in the following months as a result of the event.[1]

The cold weather preceding and during the Great Smog led Londoners to burn more coal than usual to keep themselves warm. Post-war domestic coal tended to be of a relatively low-grade, sulphurous variety (economic necessity meant that better-quality "hard" coals tended to be exported), which increased the amount of sulphur dioxide in the smoke. There were also numerous coal-fired power stations in the Greater London area, including Fulham, Battersea, Bankside, Greenwich and Kingston upon Thames, all of which added to the pollution. According to the UK's Met Office, the following pollutants were emitted each day during the smoggy period: 1,000 tonnes of smoke particles, 140 tonnes of hydrochloric acid, 14 tonnes of fluorine compounds, and 370 tonnes of sulphur dioxide which may have been converted to 800 tonnes of sulphuric acid.[6]

Research suggests that additional pollution-prevention systems fitted at Battersea may have worsened the air quality, reducing the output of soot at the cost of increased sulphur dioxide, though this is not certain. Additionally, there was pollution and smoke from vehicle exhaust—particularly from steam locomotives and diesel-fuelled buses, which had replaced the recently abandoned electric tram system – and from other industrial and commercial sources.[7]

Picture of London in 2018