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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

#121

Post by leoedin »

LilBytes wrote: post #102
jokethrowaway wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm a similar age to you, live in London and I've never been stabbed, mugged or assaulted in the UK. It's not that bad.

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

#122

Post by zelos »

agd wrote: post #54
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.

For non-Londoners, it’s worth pointing out that £8 for a pint is exceptionally high. In most smart pubs in central london the price for a regular pint is approx £5-£6.50. And you can get pints for approx £3 in centrally located Wetherspoons (a common pub chain).

£7 a pint in the pub in my Sussex village.

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

#123

Post by bombcar »

gadders wrote: post #114
bombcar wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I gave up answering where I lived years ago, now I just reply with the name of the nearest international airport; people are much more likely to know where LA is than any of the hundreds of smaller cities in and around its metro area.

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

#124

Post by WeylandYutani »

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…

European cities have finally given up their architectural conservatism.

You can do America (urban sprawl) or Asia (skyscrapers).

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

#125

Post by Seb-C »

WeylandYutani wrote: post #124
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…

European cities have finally given up their architectural conservatism. You can do America (urban sprawl) or Asia (skyscrapers).

France hasn't unfortunately.

I also wish we stopped giving more importance to preserving old buildings and architecture at the cost of making today's life hell for the residents.

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

#126

Post by kaashif »

RugnirViking wrote: post #85
codetrotter wrote: post #72

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…

But smaller developed countries can turn on the immigration taps a bit and continue population growth even as world population drastically shrinks.

This won't work forever, but it may buy a century or so.

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

#127

Post by leoedin »

noelwelsh wrote: post #11

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

The number of houses built in the 1870-1900 period is mad - basically a 3 mile wide ring around London. It's really impressive - especially considering all building materials had to be brought in by railway and then horse and cart.

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

#128

Post by _fat_santa »

jwmoz wrote: post #17
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 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.

Unfortunatley we are seeing prices like this in the US as well. I live in Denver, CO and a pint here typically runs between $5-$10 depending on the place.

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

#129

Post by osullip »

zelos wrote: post #122
agd wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For non-Londoners, it’s worth pointing out that £8 for a pint is exceptionally high. In most smart pubs in central london the price for a regular pint is approx £5-£6.50. And you can get pints for approx £3 in centrally located Wetherspoons (a common pub chain).

£7 a pint in the pub in my Sussex village.

$15 AUD in my local Aussie pub(7.50 pound) A little off topic but just wanted to chime in because it's crazy here.

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

#130

Post by barrkel »

Symbiote wrote: post #107
barrkel wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_...

Sure, but it still doesn't capture the nature of the respective cities.

Open up Paris and London in two side by side windows in Google Maps, at an approximately similar scale, and look at the pale yellow areas (the bits Google considers as retail rather than residential). It looks like there's more of them, spread over a larger area, in Paris than London. Paris is visibly denser than London.

To the degree that the main characteristic of cities is that they are dense population centres, Paris has more of that than London.

London has a lot of high streets which feel fairly generically similar, because they're basically the same across the whole UK - the same shops, the same Greggs, the same Costa Coffees, the same Coral bookies, the same companies.

The main thing that make cities interesting to me is niche shops, restaurants and other experiences which are not sustainable without a large catchment area of potential customers. Density is important to enabling that; a huge spread-out urban area, like the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region, doesn't really deliver it.

I don't know if Paris has the same degree of niche experiences that London has. I lived in London for 15 years, I know it well and always enjoy myself every time I return, but I always enjoy my times in Paris too. Zurich, where I am now, is a very dull place compared to either.

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