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London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades

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Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check Indeed, junior SWE jobs in London are listed starting at ~£25k/yr. Yes, £8 is expensive for a pint of lager.

I'm sure you _can_ find salaries that low but it's not typical. I started on £30k 6 years ago, and that company was infamous for underpaying grads! Most other junior developers I knew (at other companies) were on ~£40k or so. £8/pint is also way more expensive than normal. I was out in Shoreditch last night, paid £6.70 for a pint of Brewdog, and that was more than I'd usually pay.

I can find $10 pints nearby, but I can also find $1 can nights, all within a mile or so of each other.

Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades

#92
post #80
post #62

One thing that always surprises me when you see London from on-high is how flat it is. Barely any hills at all.

Yep - Greater London does have some hills, especially in the outer boroughs, but most of the highest points that are not within a couple of kilometres of the border are all under 140m high.

Yeah - what's the big one nearby? Hampstead Heath? That seems to have views over London.

Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades

#93

Almost everything you see is residential. And in the case of the new office blocks (the Canary Wharf shots), the developers are seeking consent for residential conversions. Playing SimCity and building only residential zones doesn't tend to work out great.

It's easier to convert residential to other uses than the other way around.

So, if there's demand for housing, keep building housing until the demand dries up.

Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades

#94
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We often hear here (Berlin) that the housing affordability crisis is due to not building enough housing...Yet London apparently built loads in the last 20 years and it's still as unaffordable as ever (or even more than ever)? Is there any data showing that if we let loose and build a ton of housing that purchase prices and (especially) rents will reduce significantly? It's intuitively true but all the cities you can…

London prices have been high for a long time but growth has been more reasonable since the flat construction boom.

Eyeballing from a chart here (https://www.plumplot.co.uk/London-house-prices.html)

- 1995 to 2010: 300% growth (10% p.a.)

- 2010 to 2023: 75% growth (4% p.a.)

Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades

#95

London 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...

As far as I can recall the population of the UK has hovered around 55 million since the early 80s at least, but this number doesn't seem to make sense to me. I'm reminded of a March 2020 London Evening Standard headline saying that half of the adult population of the UK had been vaccinated and the headline gave 55 million people as the total for that number, which gave me pause for thought.

Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades

#96
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" 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...

It makes you wonder what it will be like in another few hundred years... When we first moved to London (Zone 2/3) the place we lived in used to be a large apple orchard 100-150 years prior. Where we moved to after was on the grounds of a former nunnery then recouperation hospital. And now the area we're in used to be grazing fields 100 years ago.

I was shocked the other day by seeing a physical travelcard ticket for Zones 1-9 and having to confirm from a Tube station map that a Zone 9 actually exists. This is four more than I could remember.

Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

birth rates in pretty much every developed nation are below replacement level. Some countries are using migration as a sort of band-aid fixed but the worst fears are starting to come true recently. Previously some people had thought or hoped that falling birthrates was/is a natural concequence of becoming rich enough, that as countries develop kids are seen as less of a necessity. But iirc newer data shows falling bi…

The human population cannot grow indefinitely without moving to other planets, which is very much infeasible now and probably infeasible into the foreseeable future. Society just has to adapt. The problem I see is our current leaders are only interested in pushing the problem down the road. Declining population (which won't actually decline till 2080-ish IIRC) is not in itself a problem.

Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades

#98
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes you wonder what it will be like in another few hundred years... When we first moved to London (Zone 2/3) the place we lived in used to be a large apple orchard 100-150 years prior. Where we moved to after was on the grounds of a former nunnery then recouperation hospital. And now the area we're in used to be grazing fields 100 years ago.

I was shocked the other day by seeing a physical travelcard ticket for Zones 1-9 and having to confirm from a Tube station map that a Zone 9 actually exists. This is four more than I could remember.

To be fair I didn't know that either... For some reason I thought 7 was the last zone... 13 years here (almost to the day) and I've learned something new !

Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades

#99

Earlier 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…

The in-nostril build up that you get from certain Underground lines is also mind boggling. I have not encountered anything comparable in other cities to that dust on the Northern line.

Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades

#100
It's fascinating how boom and bust this is. You look at the City, or at King's Cross and there's just been a total transformation. Then you look at Nine Elms or Highbury and really very little has changed.

You've got Wembley - massively built up, loads of carparks gone and building in it's place. Then you've got the Millenium Dome, one big car park in 2007, one big car park in 2023.

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