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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

#211

Post by barrkel »

Symbiote wrote: post #139
barrkel wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ma…

You seem to be arguing that Paris is better, and have some good points. All I was saying is London is bigger.

No I'm not saying Paris is better. I'm not saying it's bigger either. I'm saying they're different qualitatively, that size isn't everything, that density is also important.

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

#212

Post by kmlx »

bandris wrote: post #197
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…

Agree. Meanwhile the number of cars noticably decreased. Lower noise, better air, significantly more cyclists. The 20mph speed limit certainly helped to achive this. (Too slow to move around with a car.)

the congestion charge helped as well in that part of london.

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

#213

Post by ivix »

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…

Concluding that the planning in London is poor because you can't find manufacturing space is certainly...an opinion.

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

#214

Post by isaacremuant »

creativenolo wrote: post #201
isaacremuant wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax rates matter. It's easy to talk as a yank in a US salary with the tax rates in most states. UK is insane.

-healthcare, etc, etc

Healthcare is terrible. It's mostly a scam with lots of propaganda and lack of perspective by British citizens. I'm not kidding. It's a system where the NHS will just push you forward and the insurance will cover fuck all and try to get you to the same NHS doctor.

It's the same nanny state style as some other European countries where they will try and sell you nothing over the counter because "you might abuse it" but they have a drinking and illegal drug culture to rival the best of them.

The US sucks if you're in the lower end of the spectrum without insurance but with insurance you actually get treatment. There's other countries where it's a pleasure to have private healthcare if you're middle class but many in europe definitely aren't. They'll just try to discourage you unless you're having an "my leg is detaching" type of emergency.

There's a reason why there's ads in the tube to "go to turkey to fix X health problem".

We should stop comparing having a health net for the jobless in a country with the US and typical quality of life/healthcare situation for a professional.

Edit: If I felt things worked, and people would eventually be able to afford houses and get into a better situation high taxes would be fine, but it's high taxes and policies that still benefit the richest/landlords/corporates/big pharma. It's corruption and classism. He former is widespread in many countries but the pretense otherwise is what is annoying.

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

#215

Post by hk__2 »

jacooper wrote: post #210
hk__2 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because as a populated city it’s very young: it virtually didn’t exist in the 19th century while London was the most populated city of the whole world at the time. Even in the 1930s London had 300x the population of Riyadh. You have to wait until the 1980s to see Riyadh have more than 1M inhabitants.

This doesn't make it any less impressive to see a whole city changing in 10 years. Even Dubai which is probably younger didn't have the same level of change in the last 5 years.

Sure, but that makes it less relevant as an example in a comment on a story about London.

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

#216

Post by southernplaces7 »

dylan604 wrote: post #178
southernplaces7 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Sure, the war, the Blitz, etc. but those weren't the main causes. The regrowth in population took decades even after the war ended. NYC never got bombed, but it went through nearly the same thing during the same time frame.

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

#217

Post by varispeed »

ivix wrote: post #213
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…

Concluding that the planning in London is poor because you can't find manufacturing space is certainly...an opinion.

workshop or light manufacturing.

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

#218

Post by jwmoz »

pydry wrote: post #35
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.

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…

I used the beer example as it happened that day. Same goes for restaurant food etc.

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

#219

Post by jwmoz »

hk__2 wrote: post #25
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.

> Now it is honestly too expensive, £8 a pint in pub near work, it makes going out less fun. Aren’t the salaries higher as well? In Paris a pint is €7 on average (~£6) but according to Glassdoor the average SWE salary is only €53k/yr vs. £68k for London.

Salaries aren't increasing at the same rate.

I got a 2.5% salary increase this year. Because of inflation is should be > 8% (ONS has a recommendation). Complained about it and they still wouldn't increase it.

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

#220

Post by jwmoz »

pm215 wrote: post #168
gadders wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" :-)

Real Londoners use this.
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