People like to say that people just have 'bullshit jobs' nowdays and I somewhat agree but this made me feel like there's actually a lot of work being done and progress being made.
London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades
31–40 of 220 posts
Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades
#32I see lots of new office buildings and sports facilities, so I was wondering what happened on the residential side. What I found is this dataset: Total Number of Dwellings and Net Additional Dwellings, Borough https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/net-additional-dwellings-... It shows 614,474 net new dwellings between 2001/02 and 2021/22. Unfortunately, they don't appear to collect data on floor space at all. So this is…
Most of the new towers you see in the pictures are flats. For instance, around Wembley Stadium the vast majority are flats. Lots of (fancy) flats on the Isle of Dogs as well.
It's mostly offices only in the City and Canary Wharf.
Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades
#33When I moved here the Gherkin was an iconic building in the skyline. Now I can rarely see it, surrounded by other generic skyscrapers. I find it really sad they obscured it from vision.
I have similar feeling about the LLoyds of London building, which is within the same few blocks. In the late '80s/early '90s it was iconic as a newly different building. Now it is practically lost between other huge (and IMO completely soulless) buildings.
I've enjoyed looking at these photos, but it also kinda makes me sad that there is such a massive drive to increase density in the city. I think I may be at a time of my life where I'm over being in or close to the capital.
Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades
#34People like to say that people just have 'bullshit jobs' nowdays and I somewhat agree but this made me feel like there's actually a lot of work being done and progress being made.
Those people don’t know what they’re talking about
Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
What was your reason for loathing living in London? Edit: reason I ask is because I assume it's costs, I can't imagine your apartment was cheap. I don't see much evidence that even SWE's can comfortably live there.
It was great in 2012 and comfortable for SWEs (am one). Now it is honestly too expensive, £8 a pint in pub near work, it makes going out less fun.
That's the one kind of inflation which didn't bother me too much. I still go out just as much I just drink less. That's healthier.
The property situation makes me far more angry. The UK construction and property industry completely lacks market discipline and quality regulations have been reduced (see: Grenfell where that literally killed people, but also the shocking build quality of most properties).
Then there was the restriction of homebuilding - deliberately engineered by successive governments in order to jack up property prices and parasitically extract a greater % of Londoner incomes via rents.
When the Tories talked about being Singapore-on-Thames I wished they meant build thousands of nice HDB apartment blocks and get tough on corruption but alas it seems what they actually meant was Moscow-on-Thames - make London an even bigger haven for oligarchs and dial up the corruption with more no bid government contracts to their mates.
Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was great in 2012 and comfortable for SWEs (am one). Now it is honestly too expensive, £8 a pint in pub near work, it makes going out less fun.
Yeah, who could ever afford a £8 ping on a SWE salary. /s
Check Indeed, junior SWE jobs in London are listed starting at ~£25k/yr. Yes, £8 is expensive for a pint of lager.
Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
What was your reason for loathing living in London? Edit: reason I ask is because I assume it's costs, I can't imagine your apartment was cheap. I don't see much evidence that even SWE's can comfortably live there.
It's not really about the cost. I would say it's pollution, crime and lack of avenues for small kids. I was living on a skyscraper and the amount of black dust I was removing from next to the windows was mind-blowing. I still remember moving 1hr out of London and feeling like I was breathing again. Not what I wanted for my kids. The amount of stabbing and theft going on was pretty crazy. It was all around you. Some p…
Your comments are a reflection of life in Tower Hamlets, where PanP etc. are. London otherwise in the N, NE and SW parts has clean air with plenty of green spaces for kids.
Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades
#38Hard to see any signifiant difference.
Yeah, less “my, how we’ve grown!” And more “meh, how’ve we grown?”
Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades
#39London really grew in the Victorian era. E.g. http://www.demographia.com/dm-lon31.htm Reading Dickens is one way to get a feel for this. Many locations in his books are not yet part of the London conurbation. IIRC, one book has a character walking over fields to get to Hammersmith, for example. Going back further there is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Martin-in-the-Fields
" Henry VIII rebuilt the church in 1542 ... at this time it was literally "in the fields", occupying an isolated position between the cities of Westminster and London."
In the 1550s the country was unrecognisable compared to now. England's total population was about 3 million, now London's population is 9 million (and was 100k then)...
Edit: Apparently, wolves in England had just become extinct at the time...
Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades
#40People like to say that people just have 'bullshit jobs' nowdays and I somewhat agree but this made me feel like there's actually a lot of work being done and progress being made.
Let’s cut those “bullshit” jobs and see what happens to these people’s investments.