In the 1990s, the lakeside village of Iseltwald in Switzerland was largely unknown. Access was along a narrow road or via the water. Visitors were Swiss day-trippers and some Europeans tourists.
In 2018, a South Korean TV crew arrived in Iseltwald to film a scene for the Netflix series Crash Landing on You. Fans of the drama now flock to the village, undeterred by long queues and the recent introduction of a Sfr 5 charge to stand on the wooden dock where a man once played a piano.
This unexpected popularity has proved challenging for local people, many of whom have lived in Iseltwald for generations. Visitors gather flower bouquets from private gardens for their TikTok posts; others take intrusive photographs. One woman discovered a young man in his underwear standing in front of her basement washing machine. He explained that a social media post had recommended this spot as a good place to wash your laundry for free.
My hometown of Folkestone, on the south-east coast of England, has experienced a similar rise in popularity. There are major differences, of course. 53,000 people live in Folkestone and just 400 live in Iseltwald. Fans of the Netflix drama visit for an hour or two. Nobody moves there.
I am curious as to how we navigate the psychology of ‘what’s mine’ and ‘what’s yours.’ Do I, as someone who lives in a place, have more right to it than the visitor who is travelling in a free world, making choices that are his and hers to make.
How can we navigate the spaces we occupy with sensitivity and generosity. How do we avoid entitlement and hold respectful boundaries.
I grew up in Folkestone in the 1970s. When people asked me where I was from, I used to say ‘Kent’, in the hope of focussing imaginations on rolling countryside and 15th century pubs. I was embarrassed by Folkestone. I thought it was shabby and dull.
In 2015 I began to visit more often, at a time when the town was experiencing a huge surge in popularity. During casual conversations with strangers, I would tell them that I lived in Hertfordshire. This frequently led to rapturous descriptions of Folkestone – the Harbour, the Creative Quarter, the Leas, the wonderful high-ceilinged apartments which they’d bought for a song. They had moved down from London, they told me. On a whim. They’d come for the day and loved it. No regrets. Best decision ever.
These stories began to irritate me. ‘So, is this your first visit to Folkestone?’ they’d ask.
‘No, I grew up here’, I would reply, a little frostily, sub vocally adding, ‘back when it was gritty and edgy… long before you arrived’.
My hometown was being mentioned in The Guardian, The Times, even The New York Times. Journalists were describing Folkestone as ‘a bit like Detroit, without the Motown’, ‘like Hackney before it got gentrified’ and ‘a Barbican by the Sea’.
Folkestone has a diverse history. At the beginning of the last century it was considered to be the most aristocratic seaside resort in England. The Leas was described as one of ‘the finest marine promenades in the world’.
During WWI soldiers from across the Empire and Commonwealth gathered in Folkestone as they waited to cross the Channel to fight on Flanders fields. In 1914 one hundred thousand Belgian refugees arrived, fifteen thousand of whom subsequently settled in the town. The King of Belgium declared Folkestone to be ‘the prettiest place in existence.’
Today, the refugee crisis of one hundred years ago is being replicated as small boats cross the English Channel from France.
World War II was less kind to Folkestone. Fighter planes were shot down, either into the sea or onto the town itself. The military mined and wired the beaches and placed gun batteries along The Leas. Thirty-five thousand residents moved away.
There followed more than two decades of demolition and re-planning and from the rubble of bombed Victorian villas grew the brutalist blocks of the 1960s.
In the 70s Folkestone lost its edge as a seaside resort when affordable package holidays in Europe re-routed the masses to Malta and the Costa del Sol.
The 1990s saw the construction of the Channel Tunnel.
In 2022, I interviewed Diane Dever who had been in charge of curating and developing the old Folkestone ferry and railway terminal. Dever has a degree in Art in the Public Space. Her first degree, however, was Geography.
“Physical Geography is about the world and what it’s made of. Human Geography is about people and the patterns they create,” she explained. “I am interested primarily in how people work and fit into the natural environment.”
When the Harbour Arm project came up, she was curious to see whether art-led regeneration could be done well; whether the maxim A rising tide lifts all boats could successfully be implemented in Folkestone or whether there would inevitably be winners and losers. The town has gone through many changes so Dever knew that change was possible. “The question I had was how would it change and how would people change with it?”
“We are experiencing our fourth or fifth wave of ‘in-migration”, reflected Dever. “How do we welcome those who arrive here? How do we protect those who live here from feeling threatened?”
I thought about my own parents who moved to Folkestone from London. My Irish grandfather had lung damage from fighting in WWI and my Swiss mother had spent a year as a tuberculosis patient at a sanatorium in Davos. There must have been plenty of ‘people like us’ who wanted to escape the polluted air of London in search of a better life for themselves and their families.
We promptly invited hundreds of foreign students into the town. Many people welcomed them and for sixty years students from the School of English Studies lived with Folkestone host families. Life-long friendships were made.
Some people, however, weren’t so enthusiastic about all these foreigners living in their community. It made them feel uncomfortable. It made them feel as though they didn’t belong.
“People are moving to Folkestone from London and elsewhere because it’s a great place to live. It’s not their fault and we shouldn’t blame them. After all, we did the same” continued Dever.
How can we study these migration patterns and learn from them? How do we resist the desire to criticize and exclude?
“We don’t know how this will roll out. All we can do is be open to it because it’s happening. Each wave of new migration looks with uncertainty and a critical eye at the wave that follows.”
How can we address this fear? How do we engage with the very real concerns that people have such as: ‘This is too big’. ‘It’s happening too fast’. ‘Who are you?’. ‘Where do I belong?’.
In the early 1900s the Leas was a restricted area, privately policed in order to keep the working class out of the west end. Urban legend has it that some, who lived in the east end of Folkestone, would pawn what few valuables they had in order to dress up in fine clothes and parade freely along the Leas on a Sunday. One hundred years later and the development of the Harbour Arm established the east end, the old fishing community, at the centre of this new space. Today there is no separation or exclusion.
“Everyone is welcome”, said Dever. “No one has to pay to go there. The music is free. You can enjoy a beer. The children can run around. Those who live along the Leas come down too. We created a social space there.
“The Arm is not in the town, it’s an out-at-sea place, a place that people go to at the same time, in the same way, for the same thing. And those who live here can look back at their town and see how beautiful it is.”
Folkestone is on the map and young people are returning to live and work, as artists and owners of small shops and cafes. People are moving to Folkestone because the town is an exciting place to be. “We should be proud of that”, said Dever.
In Iseltwald, a visiting Korean was asked whether she objected to paying Sfr 5 in order to take pictures on the dock. She laughed and said “I’ve spent thousands of dollars getting here. If the ticket were Sfr 100, I’d pay it.”