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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

#101

Post by Symbiote »

Cullinet wrote: post #96
illwrks wrote: 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.

Long ago when I moved to London, it was zones 1-6 then A-D for stations outside Greater London. I think changing A-D to 7, 8 & 9 made it simpler; most people aren't interested in what the local government is when they buy a ticket.

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

#102

Post by LilBytes »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #30
LilBytes wrote: post #15

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…

That hurts to hear.

I grew up in Hartlepool (North East of England), moved to Australia when I was 19 and I'm 35 now.

I moved because I was stabbed, and can't count on one hand how many times I'd been assaulted and mugged in the 10 years prior. To hear the rest of the country is heading in a similar direction is a horrid reflection on the state of affairs in the UK.

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

#103

Post by kmlx »

i moved to London a decade ago, and it's incredible how much the city has changed. whole new neighborhoods have been built on the sites of former industrial parks. existing neighborhoods are expanding, and new skyscrapers are appearing all over the place. even new (and huge) infrastructure projects.

as a european, this change is something special. in europe you will rarely find a city as big and important as London where there is so much construction taking place in every single corner of the city.

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

#104

Post by kmlx »

SilverBirch wrote: post #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.

> Then you look at Nine Elms or Highbury and really very little has changed.

https://nineelmslondon.com/transformation/

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

#105

Post by illwrks »

ido wrote: post #60
mytailorisrich wrote: post #32

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…

Two of my neighbours don't live in their London properties... The live elsewhere in the UK and come to London once month or so for meetings. Id never seen this before, but I assume this might be part of the problem, properties underutilised.

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

#106

Post by Barrin92 »

kypro wrote: post #4

Cool, but feels underwhelming in comparison to the growth of other cities over the past few decades. Shanghai, Dubai, etc..

Sure, but that's also not comparable. Dubai's population was 20.000 (!) in 1950. 500k in 1990, 3+ million today. That's a ~150x growth over the lifetime of a single person. London has grown by I think 20-ish percent over the last thirty years and was alreay affluent and large decades ago. Which is still pretty swift compared to Berlin or Paris. The kind of catch up growth where cities are built out of nothing an old city cannot compete with.

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

#107

Post by Symbiote »

barrkel wrote: post #20
NeoTar wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real story is one of intensification. Before 2000-or-so there weren't many sky-scrapers in the City-of-London (i.e the central financial district), now it looks like there are upwards of twenty. Similarly in almost every photograph there is much less brown/grey space. Either empty spaces, or inner-city car-parks have been replaced by parks, or by new buildings. I think this is reflected in the population history…

Yeah, city limits is a terrible way to measure city size because it varies so much depending on how different countries like to partition and label things. On paper, Paris is much smaller than London (2 million vs 9 million), but Île-de-France has 12 million, but that in turn is a more expansive measure than Greater London. Inner London has 3.5 million. But London is basically a couple of significant cities with load…

There are various EU statistical measures that attempt to be "fair". These show London is slightly larger than Paris.

Although the OECD has them at almost the same size.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_in_...

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

#108

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

kmlx wrote: post #103

i moved to London a decade ago, and it's incredible how much the city has changed. whole new neighborhoods have been built on the sites of former industrial parks. existing neighborhoods are expanding, and new skyscrapers are appearing all over the place. even new (and huge) infrastructure projects. as a european, this change is something special. in europe you will rarely find a city as big and important as London w…

It's astounding how much greener it is in the pictures.

It can take trees ~30 years to reach maturity where they can span across an entire street.

I assumed that part of the reason the nicer neighborhoods in the EU and most the US were so nice is because they had always been green and nice.

But maybe it only takes ~10 years or so?

Not familiar with London, but looking at the pictures, it looks like maybe this is a relatively new thing?

If so, that's kind of exciting, because I figured it might take way longer for other parts of other cities to become as nice and pleasant as the select few crazy expensive neighborhoods we all love.

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

#110

Post by NeoTar »

gadders wrote: post #92
NeoTar wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's the highest point that could reasonably be described as central - 137m

For the rest see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest_points_in_Lond...

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