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How London became the rest of the world’s startup capital

economist.com

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Re: How London became the rest of the world’s startup capital

#271

Post by dartharva »

eloisant wrote: post #205
walthamstow wrote: post #26

I am completely biased but I think London is one of the best places to live in the world, everything considered. There's a guy on Instagram who spins a wheel for a random country and goes to eat that cuisine somewhere in London. There are maybe 1 or 2 places in the world you can do that. It's an incredible feat of human diversity to pack hundreds of global cuisines into a 10 mile radius.

You can do that in any big international city. NYC, LA, SF, Tokyo, Paris, Berlin, and I'm probably missing a lot of them. Way more than "1 or 2".

Definitely, even Mumbai and Bangalore.

Re: How London became the rest of the world’s startup capital

#272

Post by browningstreet »

rmccue wrote: post #266
pjc50 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Elizabeth Line, formerly known as Crossrail, is a lot more similar to the hundred year plan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossrail My dad was a tunnels engineer and worked on Crossrail feasibility studies at several points in his career across decades. London is is many ways one of the less impressive subway systems simply because much of it is so old, with small trains running in Victorian era tunnels. Not as…

> Not as bad as the Glasgow one, which feels like travelling on a 2/3 scale model of a subway with alarmingly narrow platforms. For anyone who's not aware, the Glasgow Subway is literally smaller - the track gauge is 4ft (85% of standard gauge), and the rolling stock (trains) is similarly scaled down, to the point that you probably have to duck if you're over 6ft.

Budapest subway is something similar, too.

Re: How London became the rest of the world’s startup capital

#273

Post by quotz »

eloisant wrote: post #203
johnisgood wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is widely known that public transport in the US is god awful. Public transportation is lovely in most European countries, IMO.

It's pretty good in NYC. I heard it's nice in Boston too.

Its good in NYC for american standards. For european standards the NYC subway is abominable. The smells, the grime, the homeless, its honestly like visiting the 6th ring of hell. Source: I am a european living in NYC.

Re: How London became the rest of the world’s startup capital

#274

Post by nanna »

rmccue wrote: post #266
pjc50 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Elizabeth Line, formerly known as Crossrail, is a lot more similar to the hundred year plan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossrail My dad was a tunnels engineer and worked on Crossrail feasibility studies at several points in his career across decades. London is is many ways one of the less impressive subway systems simply because much of it is so old, with small trains running in Victorian era tunnels. Not as…

> Not as bad as the Glasgow one, which feels like travelling on a 2/3 scale model of a subway with alarmingly narrow platforms. For anyone who's not aware, the Glasgow Subway is literally smaller - the track gauge is 4ft (85% of standard gauge), and the rolling stock (trains) is similarly scaled down, to the point that you probably have to duck if you're over 6ft.

I remember that one of Stockholm's train line is also endearingly tiny too?

Re: How London became the rest of the world’s startup capital

#275

Post by matt-p »

dijit wrote: post #195
blibble wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The UK uses other parts of the county as a piggy bank to fund London projects. it's the exact opposite

This is demonstrably false. The data shows the exact opposite. Transport spending in London was £1,313 per capita in 2023/24, compared with just £368 per head in the East Midlands[0] - nearly 4x the investment. Over the decade to 2022/23, if the North had received the same per person transport spending as London, it would have received £140 billion more[1]. The East Midlands got just £355 per person, the lowest of ev…

Elizabeth line will pay for itself very very quickly. It's entirely possible that investment in say a tram network in the east midlands will never pay for itself. Left with business cases like that it's not really a shock what the goverment choses. I agree it's unfair and self fulfilling, but this is what life is like, success breeds success and failure, well.

I think north of 62% of elizibeth line spending was spent with companies outside the M25, for example building the trains kept a chunk of Derby in work when the factory would have otherwise closed (more than once!) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cew407745jko

Re: How London became the rest of the world’s startup capital

#276

Post by hearsathought »

lurk2 wrote: post #234
graemep wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is deep enough pool of capital for the vast majority of businesses. Its cultural diversity is a plus for most people (other than people like DHH). The big problem with London is that it is very, very expensive.

> Its cultural diversity is a plus for most people Cultural diversity is not a draw. Africa, Latin America, and Central Asia are all culturally and ethnically diverse. No one moves to any of these places. The primary draw of a city like London is economic prosperity, which is ironically usually only made possible by ethnic homogeneity. This is the case in Britain’s former colonies (USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand…

> This is the case in Britain’s former colonies (USA

The USA was never a colony of britain. The american colonies were.

> The primary draw of a city like London is economic prosperity

Then tokyo or singapore or dubai would have been even greater draws. But they are not.

What becomes a "tech capital" is primarily a political decision. If london is a major tech center, it's because of political decisions within britain but primarily outside of britain ( the US ).

Re: How London became the rest of the world’s startup capital

#277

Post by socalgal2 »

sofixa wrote: post #219
socalgal2 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know London all that well, I've only spent about a month there. But in my limited experience the food scene didn't come close to LA, SF, NYC, Tokyo. As an example, the LA metro Area (LA, OC, SB), 46% latino, 27% white, 15% asian 7% african, 3% mixed There huge sections of those cities, several kilometers long where you drive for miles and see majority one culture. Several areas majority korean, chinese, japan…

I disagree, NYC was OK but LA and SF specifically, the average quality of food was pretty bad. There were absolutely good options, plenty of them, but on average, just walking around, seeing something that looks good and checking Google Maps reviews (including reading them), had 0 guarantee of the food being of any quality. Compared to London and Paris where you're guaranteed a good meal in any random place as long a…

Wow, my experience is so different. The two most disappointing places I’ve ever been food wise were London and Paris. Spent 2 months in Paris, nothing stuck out except for one home cooked meal at a friend’s

as Tyler Cowen says, Tokyo has the best food in the world, and the best French food in the world.

https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/david-brooks-2/

Tokyo has even won best pizza as judged by the Italian pizza competition in Italy several years

Paris has almost no East Asian food and what I did see when trying to find some was all in porcelain trays like slightly fancier Panda Express.

London I found a few good places in Soho but just slightly out of the center it was a food desert

Re: How London became the rest of the world’s startup capital

#278

Post by zabzonk »

ghaff wrote: post #258
pjc50 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Elizabeth Line, formerly known as Crossrail, is a lot more similar to the hundred year plan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossrail My dad was a tunnels engineer and worked on Crossrail feasibility studies at several points in his career across decades. London is is many ways one of the less impressive subway systems simply because much of it is so old, with small trains running in Victorian era tunnels. Not as…

It's a pretty extensive system and the pretty new Elizabeth Line is great. But if you take something like the Piccadilly Line in from the airport, you probably shouldn't have a lot of luggage because a lot of stations just have stairs and platforms are often at a significant offset from the underground cars. (The double decker busses also work pretty well although they're not generally my default.)

> a lot of stations just have stairs

Very few, if any. They may not have escalators (Covent garden, for eg., but no-one in their right mind uses that - just use Leicester Square and walk on the street) but there are almost always ways of getting up to the street, and assistance is signposted for people with problems.

> platforms are often at a significant offset from the underground cars

Not sure what you mean here - mind the gap? Typically less on the Piccadilly than some other lines - Bank on the Central is particularly scary.

Based on living 30-odd years in London, most of it using the Piccadilly line on my daily commute and to get to LHR.

Sounding like a TfL groupie here, but it is a pretty good transit system, given geographic and budgetary constraints.

Re: How London became the rest of the world’s startup capital

#279

Post by bombcar »

contingencies wrote: post #83
judahmeek wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where can I find a list of food unavailable outside of its origin?

While you can often get bad versions of things if you go out of your way, many foods are hamstrung by supply chain, which is to say without a critical mass the labor intensive elements do not make sense or the specific crops are unavailable. Ask any migrant (eg. your next Uber driver) which foods they miss from their hometown or childhood and whether locally available versions are up to par. You'd be surprised at the…

This is incredibly true even of things you wouldn't expect - Mexican food in Southern California is just different than Ohio even if you cook it yourself - because the ingredients may be labelled the same, but they're not.

Re: How London became the rest of the world’s startup capital

#280

Post by Beretta_Vexee »

matt-p wrote: post #270
kakacik wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To americans, London public transport feels amazing. To rest of Europe, its lets say OKish

I've lived in and visted many other cities in Europe. Public transport is often much cheaper than London, but there's few examples where I'd really say it was /better/. Can you think of an example?

Oslo and Madrid come to mind. For the worst than london, The Rome underground is so sparse, it not really usefull. Paris is dense, chaotic and overcrowded.
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