Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

londonist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 220 posts

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

#111

Post by leoedin »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #108
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 re…

That caught my eye - but I think in most cases it's just the time of year the photo was taken. Most trees are deciduous and none of the streets are particularly green in November - March. Obviously actual building sites (like the olympic park in the first picture) excepted.

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

#112

Post by sealeck »

HPsquared wrote: post #74
flower-giraffe wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canary Wharf is surrounded by poverty in a brown field redevelopment that has been a permanent construction site for over thirty years. It is not really representative of London. London is an expensive city, you’ll need several million pounds for a decent family home but if you can afford it it’s an absolutely fantastic place to live. Unfortunately the lack of affordable housing makes it less likely to be so in the l…

If you have several million pounds, you can have a nice life literally anywhere. For the same money, you'd have a better quality of life outside London.

Not really because most good things in the UK are in London (theatre, sports, clubs, museums, architecture, etc).

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

#113

Post by leoedin »

Cullinet wrote: post #95
mytailorisrich wrote: post #39

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...

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.

The UK population is 67 million today - and has been growing consistently year on year since the early 00's. It did hover around 55-58 million between 1970 and 2000 though.

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

#114

Post by gadders »

bombcar wrote: post #89
gadders wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, though, that is a prime-ish location, not much different to trying to live in Manhattan or the nice bits of SF.

Big cities are big enough that you can have vastly different ideas of what it means to "live in New York" or "live in LA" - I had friends in both who would say they lived there, but were a minimum an hour from the central business district.

Yeah. You get people who live in Bromley who say they live in London, just because it's a London Borough.

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

#115

Post by sdfghswe »

kmlx wrote: post #104
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/

Oddly specific that you happened to have such a link in your pocket.

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

#116

Post by csomar »

iiiieu wrote: post #23
jwmoz wrote: post #17

Earlier 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

Unless you want going out to be an Instagramable event instead of an after work one, then yeah.

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

#117

Post by detritus »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #108
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 re…

London's been a very green city for decades, if not a hundred years, because of planting done when victoirian development started. If anything, the last years seem to have had a reduction in tree cover, to fit in all of these new developements. The saplings carelessly planted in their place will take decades to reach maturation.

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

#118

Post by spacebanana7 »

varispeed wrote: post #66

The planning in London is very poor. All they build are really the buildings that are meant to store value for foreign investors, typical open plan offices or warehouses. There is nothing build that would be for workshops or light manufacturing. Friend of mine have been trying to find a workshop space in London or vicinity for over a year and there is very little available. It's either very expensive and too large or…

> There is nothing build that would be for workshops or light manufacturing.

Large capital cities are generally terrible places for manufacturing. Real estate is competitive, transport is congested and labour is expensive.

That's why most Chinese products come from tier 3 cities unless there's a really special need for skilled labour or a legacy factory happened to be built 15-20 years ago when the tier 1/2 cities were smaller.

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

#119

Post by leoedin »

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…

I live in the inner suburbs of North London (about 5 miles from the absolute centre) and don't really recognise any of those problems. There's loads of kids here - literally every 3rd house on my road has a family with young kids in it. Nurseries are no more crowded than other UK cities either. Obviously there's some level of crime - but that's also present everywhere to varying degrees. There's loads of kids activities here as well.

The city isn't a single place - it's a whole load of historical towns and neighbourhoods joined together. Experiences vary.

Post reply on HN