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Amanda de Cadenet is leaving LA for Kensal Rise, Helen Mirren has snapped up a house in Wapping and Hampstead is now packed with pop stars. It's hard to know what sort of people live where these days. Lisa Freedman presents a guide to new London.

1: Hampstead

Local newspaper the Ham and High still pretends that Hampstead is a teeming seminar of intellectual life and weekly vaunts a local writer, poet or philosopher (often on the obituaries page). These are the remnants of a world that can no longer afford to live here. Proper shops have ceded to fashion boutiques and estate agents, but there's still the Heath - great for walking the Basenji - and, more significantly, 12 leading prep schools. Famous locals: Boy George, Richard and Judy, Jamie Oliver, Nicole Appleton, Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter, Baby Spice and Sporty Spice.

2: Kensal Rise

For those who find Notting Hill too in-your-face trendy or too expensive, the next stop seems to be Kensal Rise. Not glamorous or pretty, but fashionable little boutiques and restaurants are beginning to open. Famous locals: Dermot O'Leary, Eddie Izzard and soon Amanda de Cadenet, too.

3: Notting Hill

The area's edge has been blunted by the intimidating row of noughts attached to every house price. These are fat cats, but fat cats who - to give them their due - understand the precise moment to move from Prada to Marni and how to juggle Cath Kidston with The Cross. Famous locals: Harold Pinter and Lady Antonia Fraser, Robbie Williams, Stella McCartney.

4: Shepherd's Bush

Its Central Line connections and proximity to the Gate has helped this area in its reincarnation from white working class, to immigrant and ethnic, to Notting Hill overspill. Its latest influx of privately educated tastemakers, driven out from two-bedroom flats in Notting Hill to sprog in more affordable housing, have made it newly chic. The main thoroughfare - the Goldhawk Road - has still not caught up with the designer-aware inhabitants, but it's surely only a matter of time. Famous locals: Nigella Lawson, George Melly.

5: Kensington and Chelsea

The Royal Borough used to be socially divided between dull, but respectable, Kensington and raffish Chelsea, where drunken artists seduced willing mistresses in picturesque cottages. Chelsea has the King's Road, while rich Kensingtonites are forced to shop on a high street indistinguishable from those in Scunthorpe or Skegness. In both, however, the houses are filled with smart, inherited money, the higher echelons of the City-bonus market and rich foreigners. Their sugar-pink faáades and immaculately painted stucco display a cherry-blossom-fringed perfection that wouldn't look out of place in Mary Poppins. Famous locals: Liz Hurley and Hugh Grant, Dustin Hoffman.

6: Wandsworth

They may be tied to London by work in the City, but Wandsworthites send their children to board and know their heart is truly on the grouse moors. Wellie boots, Agas and hunting dogs are the local must-have accessories. Maybe because Wandsworth is only served by British Rail they can imagine it really is in the country. Most residents hope to make that one-way journey out of town as soon as possible. As the outsize Victorian family homes here now cost the same as a minor stately, this is by no means an impossible dream. Famous locals: Ian Hislop, Johnny Vaughan, Jack Dee, Lesley Joseph.

7: Brixton

The new Notting Hill. Victoria Line transport, ethnic edge, wonderful housing stock, cheap, cheap and now less cheap, but still excellent value. Famous locals: various members of Basement Jaxx, Chris Morris, Adam and Joe.

8: Marylebone

Until recently Marylebone was a time-warp backwater of genteel, urban respectability. Then Terence Conran moved in and, over the past five years, this mainly flatland has seen a soaring demand from urban professionals for its sturdy, red-brick mansion flats and low-rise Sixties blocks - so easy to transform from dingy to Wallpaper with a lick of white paint and a sprinkling of Eames. Still very much 0.0 kids, but the spinster daughters of doctors have been edged out by the confident and cool thirtysomethings from Soho's nearby media circus. Famous locals: Madonna, Noel Gallagher, Dale Winton.

9: Islington

Like Hampstead, but nearer to the City with flimsier houses, terrible schools and no green space. Islington and trendy Lefty are no longer compatible. Though still marginally fashionable, it is mainly populated by bankers and Tory pundits. Famous locals: Alexander McQueen, Kathy Burke, Paul Whitehouse, Tony Parsons.

10: Shoreditch and Hoxton

The last recession did it for E1. The depressed City fringes, with their vacant workshops and unrentable offices, were transformed by local-council legislation which liberated the housing stock into live/work spaces for young artists and artisans. Nowadays, only those who've made it to Britpack stardom can afford the tourist prices charged by local restaurants and bars. Those in search of a grittier reality have moved further east, where the inner-city crime is unleavened by smugness. Famous locals: Jarvis Cocker, Fay Ripley, Kylie Minogue's boyfriend James Gooding.

11: Borough

This Dickensian district, so long visited only by film crews and blindly scurrying commuters from London Bridge station, has been taken over by the generation that defined the Sixties - Zandra Rhodes, Andrew Logan, etc. Now themselves in their sixties, these fashion pioneers have revamped its loft spaces and colonised its excellent food shops. Not good for schools, but great for public transport, Tate Modern and unconverted warehouses. The market is superb, as is Zandra's new Ricardo Legorreta designed museum in Bermondsey Street. Famous locals: Robert De Niro, Nigel Lawson, Pete Waterman.

12: The River

This is "thank-God we've got-rid-of the kids" zone. Mid-lifers have rushed into the flurry of modern developments that now line the Thames from Wapping to Putney. These fiftysomethings want their personal space to be modern, secure and central, somewhere they can walk to the theatre and enjoy the cityscape free from phone calls from drunken teenagers. Famous locals: Sir Norman Foster, next to Albert Bridge; Helen Mirren, Wapping; Michael Caine, at Chelsea Harbour, Roger Moore at Canary Wharf.

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