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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

#171

Post by gadders »

pydry wrote: post #164
gadders wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not sure what distinction you are drawing between "immigration" and "net migration"? Net Migration is just all the people that have immigrated (moved to) to a country minus all those that have emigrated (left) a country. That is the figure of 600k for the UK currently.

>> In the UK it's not an issue with immigration because other variables override it.

Care to name some? I guess you could say that UK housing is "inefficient" but again, I'm not sure making people live in tower blocks just so that more people from other countries can move here is all that fair of a solution, or if it is what people are proposing at least make it explicit and have it as a party policy that people can vote on.

TBH property oligarchs would favour high migration because of the effect it has on property values and rents.

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

#172

Post by denton-scratch »

dougSF70 wrote: post #140
_fat_santa wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A US pint is 16 fl Oz vs a UK pint which is 20 fl Oz, so add 25% to the US price to do a like-for-like.

UK Pint == Imperial Pint. USA disapproves of imperial measure, for historical reasons.

A fluid ounce is based on avoirdupois, which isn't "imperial", so it didn't have to be abandoned. I think pints, quarts and gallons, all being based on the pint, are the only measures that differ significantly between the US and the UK.

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

#173

Post by kjkjadksj »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #28
iiiieu wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, who could ever afford a £8 ping on a SWE salary. /s

I'm not a Londoner, I only visit occasionally, but I think this may be a psychological response to a big increase. I used to like going out in London: "everything's so cheap!" Especially, getting a nice beer at a random pub would cost significantly less than a random basic lager in Paris. But this year, I was shocked to see the price increase. It's now pricier than Paris, even though Paris prices have also edged up a…

If you want cheap european beer just go to south europe. It will be cheaper than the water they charge you for.

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

#174

Post by varispeed »

nimbleplum40 wrote: post #150
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…

> All they build are really the buildings that are meant to store value for foreign investors, typical open plan offices or warehouses. Offices and warehouses is not what I expected to follow the first part of that sentence… office and warehouses are pretty productive! And likely a better use of space in a dense urban environment than a manufacturing facility.

The infrastructure is aimed at IT or any "bum on the seat" type of business were only tools that are required to do the work are a laptop and a phone.

But, if you, for instance want to do some light manufacturing - like making electronic devices, you are out of luck. In theory, you could do that kind of work in an office, but when estate agent hears about "soldering iron" or "ultrasonic cleaner" they nope out.

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

#175

Post by denton-scratch »

gadders wrote: post #90
pydry wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the one kind of inflation which didn't bother me too much. I still go out just as much I just drink less. That's healthier. The property situation makes me far more angry. The UK construction and property industry completely lacks market discipline and quality regulations have been reduced (see: Grenfell where that literally killed people, but also the shocking build quality of most properties). Then there was…

Net migration of 600k/year also affects property prices.

> 600k/year

That makes it sound as if it's 600k each year. It isn't - that's the figure for 2022. The figure for 2019 is 180k. Supposedly, the 2022 figure is inflated by official programmes encouraging immigration from Hong Kong and Ukraine.

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

#176

Post by mytailorisrich »

barnabee wrote: post #147
mytailorisrich wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The elephant in the room is population growth.

Cities like London could absorb pretty significant population growth with high quality, high density home building of the right type, in the right areas as long as they also invest in infrastructure and services too. Obviously making up the infrastructure and investment gap in other medium and large UK cities might make more sense. Most of the UK’s next 10-20 cities by size (at least) could probably take on a doublin…

At some point we perhaps need to ask ourselves if packing an ever growing number of people in ever denser and taller buildings is a positive.

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

#177

Post by throwaway03626 »

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…

In my opinion it could be solved by simply making it more attractive to have children, but it would require more equality and redistribution of wealth to cover the costs. There would still be billionaires, but the number of ultra-rich may be reduced.

Women wants careers and equal opportunities. That means they wait longer and longer before they get children because they want to make sure they have a career to go back to. That is the single most important problem that we need to solve.

1. Provide a decent parental leave (1 year minimum) with full pay.

2. Women often end up as the primary care giver who has to take care of the child when it is sick or attend parental meetings. This often hurts their career. We should incentivise men to take an equal part in raising a child, so that this is more accepted in work situations.

3. Provide free child care and health care. Many simply can't afford the additional financial burden of a child.

4. Provide free education including University. (see point 3)

5. Reduce the financial risk by creating a good safety net. If one or both of the parents are not able to cover their part, the government needs to provide enough support.

Simply put, the choice of having a child should not hurt families financially, or hurt their careers. Humans are "programmed" to want to reproduce, so if we remove the financial barriers

Yes, this will be expensive but it will be less expensive than a future without enough young people to take care of the old.

You are free to ask "Why should my money go to others", but then you don't get to complain when you are 90 years old and only get to shower once a month because they don't have enough people to help you.

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

#178

Post by dylan604 »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #153
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

Interesting to note how London's population peaked in 1939, before falling steadily after that right up to the 1980's, when it finally started to rise again into the present day. A similar thing also happened to New York City in roughly the same time frame.

I mean, nothing really happened shortly after 1939 that made people flee London, right?

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

#179

Post by snapplebobapple »

smugma wrote: post #157
ido wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will not continue seeing such rapid growth for another few hundred years, world population will plateau by mid century and even the big cities will at some point stop growing.

Inner London population peaked over 100 years ago.

You see thus in most of paris as well. Population in 1860 was 4 to 5 times what it is today in the same area.

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

#180

Post by denton-scratch »

sealeck wrote: post #112
HPsquared wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Theatre: London is certainly better than the provinces, if you like that kind of thing. I don't.

Sports: neither spectator nor participation sports are a London speciality.

Clubs: if that means nightclubs, Manchester had a much better club-scene than London when I lived there (mid 90s). I'm too old for clubbing now!

Museums and architecture: people visit museums and gawp at architecture when they're visiting a place. Once you've seen a museum, you've seen it. Sure, it's pleasant to live among nice buildings; but most of the London cityscape is not anything I'd call architecture.

I lived in Central London for 20 years. I hated it for 17 of those years. It takes an hour to get across town on the (stinking) underground, which is the quickest way. Traffic is the most-aggressive of any place that I've driven in the UK. People are unfriendly; nobody lives in London to make friends, they live in London to make money. Everyone's in a hurry, presumably because they want to make a lot of money so they can leave.

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