The picture labeled "Isle of Dogs" boomed. For us non locals: it seems that's mainly Canary Wharf, which Wikipedia says is next to Isle of dogs.
London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades
161–170 of 220 posts
Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
it is extrodinarily unlikely anyone will do such as thing. As I noted earlier. the birth rate is below replacement rate in almost all developed countries. If not for immigrants population would be shrinking. If anything they would demand more children...
It is because the elderly are dying, same as they always been dying through out the ages. The older you get the more likely you are to die. The current demographic trend is based on this assumption. It goes out the window the moment we start meaningfully reducing the probability of death.
> It goes out the window the moment we start meaningfully reducing the probability of death.
What does “Meaningfully reducing the probability of death” mean?
I thought death is certain. Do you mean pushing death further into to future, say by hundreds or thousands of years?
Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades
#163London 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
Wow, 1 million people lived in London in the 1800s!
Are there any good books / content on what day to day life was like for people in those times in London specifically?
Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
The UK could very well easily up with net emigration and still have rising rents. New York in the 1950s ran a very high level of immigration (GIs returning from the war) and had the strongest rent controls it ever had. Neither property prices nor rents rose very much. London only passed the population threshold it reached in 1939 in 2015 - LONG after rents and property prices had been jacked up to eye watering levels…
Well, yes, I guess we could grow our population indefinitely until we tarmac over all of the UK to house them.
Land usage is horrendously inefficient in the UK and that is largely by design. Immigration might exacerbate rent rises all other things being equal but as I said it could just as easily happen with net migration too.
With Singapore you could argue that immigration is a key issue with their rising rents because proportionally it's so much higher than the UK, they make very efficient use of land and they are very much more space deprived.
In the UK it's not an issue with immigration because other variables override it.
That is unless somebody is really in the mood to indirectly take the issue to a xenophobic or a racist place on behalf of a few populist property oligarchs looking for an easy scapegoat.
Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades
#165I lived in Canary Wharf ~2011-2012, on the 42nd floor and with a stunning view west over the city. The shard was being built at the time and I've got plenty of photos of dramatic sunsets, rays streaming through the glass and trusses. As much as I loathed living in London, I quite enjoyed the view.
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 a one bedroom rental in a newly developed skyscraper called the landmark, I think I paid about £1400/month. Cost was a thing, sure, but coming from Stockholm I was used to things being expensive and anyway the move to London effectively tripled my salary at the time. I was doing fine. After the year lease was up the estate agency wanted to jack the rent by 60%, which I then learned was par for the course in London so I moved around a bit, as you do. I eventually found myself living in Islington which I didn't mind so much.
It wasn't the one thing that made me loathe living in London though, it was more like death by a thousand cuts. It ground me down you could say.
I visited again this past Christmas for a few days, the first time I was in town just as a tourist. I can definitely see the appeal when you're staying just a few nights, it's a good tourist town, but living there just wasn't for me.
Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Growing at a fixed percentage each year can never go on without growing faster than can fit in our light cone.
Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades
#167Earlier 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.
Sussex villages are full of wealthy commuters. I wouldn't expect to find anything cheap in such a place.
Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades
#168Earlier 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.
As somebody who lives well outside London, my mental model of "in London" is "within the M25" :-)
Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades
#169Earlier 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…
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…
> London is an expensive city, you’ll need several million pounds for a decent family home
Just not true. I grew up in a 4 bed house in a zone 4 area where such houses still go for under a million, especially if you're willing to do a bit of work.
It's a perfectly nice area, good schools, parks and trees, 30min train to central, what more could a normal family want?
Re: London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
We still have plenty of room on this planet, and upcoming medical technology may change the equation on the number of people dying. I hope to start a family before people start imposing measure to limit population growth.
Better medical technology means people die older. Older people already own most of the capital, having them live longer isn’t going to get us to a healthier society that’s not as biased towards existing capital versus innovation and income.