Has London actually gotten worse or is it just nostalgia?
Bit of an open question to anyone who has been in finance in London for a while.
I have been going into London quite a bit recently for insight days, spring weeks, and other events, and honestly it does not seem that great. The city feels more expensive than ever, but at the same time people keep saying it has also become noticeably less safe. You hear things like how you cannot wear a nice watch anymore or that you have to think twice about being on your phone in public.
I am not from the South of England, and before university I had only ever been to London twice. One of those times was during the Olympics, so it was not exactly a normal experience. I do not really have a point of comparison, but I keep hearing people say London used to feel a lot safer, cleaner, and more enjoyable.
I would be interested to hear from anyone who has lived or worked in the city long term. Has the quality of life for young professionals actually declined over the last ten to fifteen years, or is it just rose-tinted hindsight?
No, this is actually happening. Because all the best jobs are in London, everyone from small cities and surrounding areas moves in, and because of NIMBYs this means higher housing costs. Higher housing costs means you have to pay employees more to afford to live there, meaning everything becomes more expensive.
That leads to higher rates of theft and property crime. It's a well understood causal relationship, that poverty leads to crime.
Not necessarily coming from someone that has lived in London for a long time, but 1) I visit quite a lot bc we have big offices there and 2) I personally know a lot of people based out of London that say similar things.
This is exactly what has happened to New York as well.
The city attracts people from all over the country and world -> housing and rent prices increase but wages do not increase at the same rate -> poverty and homeless increase -> crime and social issues increase.
However, there may be an equilibrium to this.
It used to be the case that a low-wage worker could earn more, even cost of living adjusted, by moving to New York from a poorer southern state. Now, a low-wage worker could earn more (adjusted for cost of living) by moving from New York to a poorer southern state, and this is happening, NY is losing population.
London’s problem is that the UK is a lot more centralized than the U.S., and so there are few other competitive economic centers. You’re not seeing low-income Londoners retreating to Birmingham, Manchester, or Liverpool for an improvement in standard of living, and so this issue goes unresolved.
The other factor is that, because the UK has a welfare state whereas the U.S. really does not, New York has a “Darwinian” element to it. Those from elsewhere who cannot support themselves here … leave. In London, the government can support them, which means you’ve got a lot of people in council housing alongside a lot of people with loads of disposable income.
While I agree to a certain extent, I would say NYC is less like London. SF seems to be a better corollary, as NYC has still managed to be a city with lower crime rates and still has areas that are affordable in the outer boroughs. SF, on the other hand, has managed to get in its own way time after time after time again. I would say NY has the benefit of slightly more diversified industries than London or SF does, as NY also has tech and fashion as huge industries. London and SF are basically built around their respective major industries in tech and finance.
I also agree a ton on your point about London and the lack of other cities. I made that point in another post, but generally I agree that the US has a lot of different cities to work with. Don't like finance in NY? Boston, DC, Houston, Chicago, and Miami ain't too bad. Don't like finance in London? Good luck.
>You’re not seeing low-income Londoners retreating to Birmingham, Manchester, or Liverpool for an improvement in standard of living, and so this issue goes unresolved.
You're actually seeing high income Londoner's move to Manchester. Not ib or anything, but software guys are living in central Manchester as it's 2 hours from London
New York City absolutely IS a welfare state- all on a spectrum but I think Darwinian is a stretch when there is a policy that provides every homeless person a bed if they seek it out, cash assistance programs, Rental Assistance/Subsidized Housing/Section 8, Home Energy Assistance Programs (HEAP), Medicaid, SSI, Subsidized/Free public transit, Safety Net Assistance (SNA) for families that have exhausted SNAP and TANF benefits, Free hotel rooms for illegal aliens, Free drug needles (crazy), free cell phones, the list goes on.
Perhaps you're referring to the young professional who makes a bit too much to qualify for most of this in which case I agree with your premise but you'd be surprised how much of this you can qualify for if you lose your job. Also I'd remind you there is a whole underclass who has lived here for many years and in no way even remotely support themselves.
I recently moved to London and the quality of life is def higher than NYC. Not sure how it trended in the past but the current state of affairs has been overexaggerated by ppl with their own political agendas / dubai real estate agents. I will say I dont leave zone 1, but I also barely left the select few neighborhoods in NYC so I think its an apples to apples comparison
probably an influx of immigrants propping up property prices such as from China and Aussies
We are from the South of England and spent years in London. We left.
We believed that the UK was on a downward trajectory.
(no comment on politics within the UK)
What do you mean with anti-social behaviour?
Another afternoon on a different high street, various youth in a group start harassing immigrants and people of color. Yelling "go back where you came from" or throwing rocks at random people who walked by.
Just two examples, I have loads more.
There is generally a lack of respect between people nowadays, a lack of trust (low trust society) and many are trying to rip others off as a hobby. Break-ins are the norm in many populated areas, especially the South or South East.
As expected, no police call will help, even filing CCTV footage and actual proof leads to no investigation.
I’m sorry NYC is absolutely worse than London. I had to move over this month and will make a post on this later, I absolutely hate it here.
really? ive lived in both I thought nyc was wayyy better
lived in both and I unfortunately thought london’s way better especially long term lol. You don’t have to go bankrupt just for medical bills on london for example, and a lot of things that london do better than nyc too
No one gonna say it? The real reason London has gotten so much worse in recent years? Aight
nobody wants to get canceled. Their WSO reputation is on the line.
you're not even from the UK (based on your post history) so stfu with all that social media crap
Ohhhh I get it, no one has stated the obvious because you're afraid of being arrested! In UK you don't have free speech and right wingers are thrown in jail for mean words. goo goo gaga nanny state.
It's not just social media crap, your Mayor is Sadiq Khan and Shabana Mahmood is in charge of immigration. Welp, the sun has set on the british empire, just glad as a free American we saw it coming 250 years ago
I mean, you can take the racist line and blame immigrants, or you can take the politically correct argument grounded in economic reality and call it poverty. Immigrants often fall into the poverty bracket, which explains much of the behavior in question.
How is it that immigrants to the US manage to accumulate so much more wealth than in UK? Because Europe in general is just not meritocratic and supports both the weak and the decadent. This is coming from a European who moved to the US.
You can virtue signal by blaming society or put the blame on the group of people and their actions. My grandmother grew up in a thatched house, with no running water, and an outhouse out back, just like so many of her neighbors and family, yet her country and town had almost NO crime, zero, yes zero. But they were different people, with different upbringing and values than those who inhabit London currently.
Forget the politically correct, let's just take the correct argument which is gonna be adding some nuance to our racism here, as it always should be. Poverty itself isn't the issue it's the crime. If you have immigrants from places and cultures where they know how to take care of themselves or even properly use the resources available to them from the gov't then they won't resort to crime despite being poor.
In terms of non-violent crime (phone theft) it's gotten worse in recent years, which as others have said is largely part to increased poverty levels. Overall, it's safer than it was many years ago in terms of deaths from guns and knives and violent crime in general. This is coming from official stats and from someone who's spent all of their life in london (born and grew up here, and went to uni in london).
For professionals, no major city is better than it was 15 yrs ago+ due to asset price inflation outgrowing wages so it's not really a london issue but more of a global one.
This is not a shot at you, I am just going to use it to demonstrate a point.
You have, by your own admission, only recently started coming to London. Yet, in this public domain, have confidently stated that London "feels more expensive than ever" despite really having no concept of what that means.
The fact you feel confident to throw statements like this out there is exactly the reason why "problems" with London get overblown. People who have no business making statements continue to do so because they've seen others saying similar things. The statement probably has an element of truth to it - in fact this one definitely does - but many of these beliefs spiral out of control as they get exaggerated by those who have no idea what they're talking about.
Again, not a personal attack. Just using this as a demonstration of being careful who you listen to.
All this is to say is that yeah things have probably gotten worse but there's a lot of exaggeration out there too by people who either don't know what they're talking about and are parroting or people who have other agendas.
Imo it's definitely more expensive, these banker salaries don't go as far but personally, on the safety aspect, I've never felt particularly unsafe. And unlike a lot of people on here, I do venture outside of Zone 1 into the unsavory parts of the city. I've partied in warehouses, communicated with unlicensed medical suppliers, walked around at all sorts of hours in south London, walked with my phone out (~oooooh~). But if you don't look for trouble and you won't get in it. Has worked pretty well.
People do this a lot.
I browse Facebook and other news sites - apparently, I live in an Islamic republic and I've heard the exact area I live in being called a no-go zone. And yet it's been absolutely fine - the way people talk about it is so disproportionate.
And yes, the council is corrupt and Muslim-controlled but they really don't do much.
Tower Hamlets is that you
ok, so compared to NY (where we spend some time during the year), London feels way safer. I agree that you don't have to feel like that someone is going to shoot you at any moment in time. It's not that dangerous.
But we also have six crime reference letters from London metropolitan police and Essex police in just 20 months. We were robbed more than in previous years. Nobody threatened us directly, and there were no weapons involved (from what we understand). But dealing with car and home/ property insurance six times in one and a half years can not be a normal situation.
There is a reason why car insurance is going up all the time, why police simply stop investigating most crimes and claim "oh, this is a civil matter". There are hundreds of CCTV cameras in each corner, but if you need the footage:
a) nobody can give it to you because of GDPR
b) the police will take a quick look but usually not continue any investigation
Please frame this comment and have the bot post it automatically at the start of every new thread. The amount of idiocy these days is just astonishing.
Every city has gotten worse. Crime is not practically that much worse in NYC vs pre-Covid (as a man). Most of the uptick is in certain lower income neighborhoods. You could walk home in Manhattan at 4am still and not feel unsafe. Just requires some common sense. Don’t make eye contact with crazy / dirty looking people and you won’t have issues.
Things have gotten much more expensive. It’s a mix of prices going up but also quality / service levels going down. The highest end staple places haven’t actually taken as much price on the food but it’s the mediocre options that have raised prices a lot. Restaurants in general optimize for the midwestern girl having a IG / TT friendly experience and charge for that but the food isn’t as good. Part of this is making a reservation unnecessarily difficult to get (bc those ppl think if it’s hard to go = it must be better / more clout).
I’ve been going to London since I was a kid at least once a year. I would say it’s largely the same dynamic. Common sense and sticking to the nicer neighborhoods avoids most of the issues practically. However, Europe is much poorer than America so on a relative basis it’s not that expensive. However, it’s really not a “shariah” city like X makes it out to be. Maybe the low income neighborhoods but just don’t go to those places.
London is one of the most religiously diverse cities in the world.
Any faith, denomination or group will be there.
I think Muslims make up for 15% or so?
Yes that was the pt I was trying to make. But also when there’s that much diversity the communities tend to be closed off so your interaction is limited
You’re posting this on a site filled with Americans who trash London every other day. You’re either looking to get rage baited or setting up an echo chamber.
There’s almost a weekly “London bad” ragebait post at this point.
On a site filled mostly with Americans.
As other have mentioned it has gotten worse but so has every city. The point everyone is missing is the pace of "worsening" definitely picked up post-Covid and shows not sign of abating over the medium-term.
Housing supply is still very constrained by NIMBYism, the country is facing fiscal difficulties and given politics at the moment they will hit high-earners which are by and large London finance employees, and public services/infrastructure still get nowhere near the investment they need. Also immigration policy has been badly mismanaged with all that comes with it.
Among my personal circle the pace of the exodus/people going home has been truly staggering over the last few years.
Agree. I made comments around London specifically but UK as a whole is in a very bad situation right now. I am very nervous about the budget in Nov cos I don't have even the slightest clue how they're gonna deal with this (well I do but I don't like my conclusion). If I could leave somewhere better, I would.
It is Nostolgia... by people who didn't even experience what they are nostalgic for
As a Brit who’s lived in London for over 10 years and spent the last 2 years in the Bay Area, I’m now back in London. The city does seem slightly more unsafe when it comes to phones but apart from that the standard of living has not changed significantly since 2014 (which is also a problem in itself that it’s not improving). The quality of life is still much better than SF or NYC, the city much cleaner, greener, safer and cheaper in comparison. Obvs London doesn’t have has many high paying jobs as the Bay/NYC but nowhere in the world does.
Went to London for a short trip
Had my phone out in central london and the ski mask type crowd were openly debating if they wanted to steal it or not. I'm big so they didn't try
Other than that, had a good time
Not nostalgia, it's meaningfully worse by almost every metric you care to use than just 10 years ago. If you import the 3rd world you become the 3rd world. A lesson every Western nation adamant to refuse to learn.
The main change since 2010 was the cutting of public sector spending by the right wing government
Yes, I'm sure the reason that London has gotten worse is because the government doesn't have MORE money to spend on frivolous crap. How could they with those puny taxes? Without proper public funding they can barely afford to house and give millions of pounds to the 3rd worlders swarming their shores or properly fund police resources to imprison all those native brits posting naughty words on social media.
The British are truly some of the biggest welfare chugging basket cases on the planet. The vast majority of their "right wing" would be considered a moderate Democrat at best in the US, hence the meteoric rise of alternative parties in Parliament because of how ineffectual the Tories and Labor have proven themselves to be.
Silence, every British person in this thread. The Elon musk fangirl is speaking
I've actually lived in London (albeit for a short time) and invested in multiple UK-based businesses but sure bud. Great argument you've got there, I bet the college kids are very impressed 👏👏👏
I am surprised that no one mentioned Brexit as the primary reason of the loss of wealth. People are obsessed with immigration (if it was that bad the previous government would never have let in that many people in the UK), completely ignoring the fact that Brexit was the biggest self harm decision ever made by this country.
Brexit was a reaction
The seeds that sowed the decline of the UK happend well, well before Brexit. I'm pro-European but I completely get why Brexit occurred. That's also to say that the failures of Euro integration without a proper fiscal union, Merkel's decisions on asylum seekers that overwhelmed much of Europe's borders and undermined freedom of movement, energy dependance on Russia, limited military capability and fiscal incapability to increase defence spending to counter Russia / China / cybersecurity make Europe an equal basket case.
TL;DR: Yes - we need a 'Let's be Singapore' party that will get 95% of the vote
Let's be honest, the world just sucks now. Bring back the 90s!
That's a good question. London is still full of opportunities, but it costs more and feels a little rougher than it used to.
Most Western cities have not met housing demand with supply over the past 50 years. This is a big reason why affordability is a problem. Another problem is the lack of capital investment in the UK (and the Developed world) in general, as tax cuts and the rise of Asia drove capital to build factories in what is the most populous region in the world. Developed countries are mainly too rich and too old for the investment case to work, unless they make bold plans (open borders to bring in a surge of new immigrants, decide to build huge projects that push out PPF, etc.). Instead, they've gone populist thanks to wealth inequality, which means in fact DM countries have very rich top quartiles but the rest of the population are effectively wage-slaves barely keeping up with the cost of living. Indeed, we're in a post-capitalist world and in the era of technofeudalism.
/rant
I think capitalism doesn't fit anymore the globalized world we live in. When you take the entire world as an economic zone then you need to assume also free market of employees/investments worldwide, which an economist would make the argument that lower classes in UK should move to Bangladesh where teaching English is in demand and leave UK.
I actually think capitalism works in that context, and it should be easy for people in Britain to move and teach English in Bangladesh. That the barriers to free movement of people and ideas are rising is a sad thing, IMO and makes us all poorer (not just in a monetary sense!). I’m a fan of localism and regionalism in a natural sense (e.g. you may prefer to eat food you are used to, live with people who speak the same language as you do), but don’t think that’s antithetical to global capitalism. Fear sells and that’s why we can’t have nice things.
The amount of Gaza cope in London is hilarious, sad and scary
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