What had been the burning obsession of a few gradually became a lifetime investment for many. This was not so much apparent in the study of London’s buildings for study’s sake, although there was to be more of that than ever before. Rather it was the conscious decision by a substantial part of the London middle classes to seek the good life, not in the suburbs as their parents and grandparents had done, but in the very areas that had been abandoned in that first suburbanizing process.