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London Then and Now: Aerial Shots Show City Grow over Past Two Decades
- Dudester230602 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- samsari 3y agoWhy not go the whole hog and just make it illegal to be Black in public?
- pcf 3y agoThey said nothing about skin colour. You are seemingly more fixated on this than the other person.
- Dudester230602 3y agoDon't be racist. It has nothing to do with a skin colour.
- kypro 3y agoCool, but feels underwhelming in comparison to the growth of other cities over the past few decades. Shanghai, Dubai, etc..
- b800h 3y agoFair, but we don't have desert to build on or a single-party state, so there is that.
- jacooper 3y agoNothing beats Riyadh in growth over 10 years. The entire city changed.
- hk__2 3y agoRiyadh and Dubai are bad examples as they are in the middle of a desert.
- jacooper 3y agoWhat? Why? Riyadh changed like crazy in just 10 years.
- hk__2 3y agoYes, 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.
- ido 3y agoI would wager a guess that no other city in Western Europe grew more than London though.
- Barrin92 3y agoSure, but that's also not comparable. Dubai's population was 20.000 (!) in 1950. 500k in 1990, 3+ million today. That's a ~150x growth over the lifetime of a single person. London has grown by I think 20-ish percent over the last thirty years and was alreay affluent and large decades ago. Which is still pretty swift compared to Berlin or Paris. The kind of catch up growth where cities are built out of nothing an old city cannot compete with.
- localplume 3y ago[dead]
- thefounder 3y agoHard to see any signifiant difference.
- NeoTar 3y agoThe real story is one of intensification. Before 2000-or-so there weren't many sky-scrapers in the City-of-London (i.e the central financial district), now it looks like there are upwards of twenty. Similarly in almost every photograph there is much less brown/grey space. Either empty spaces, or inner-city car-parks have been replaced by parks, or by new buildings. I think this is reflected in the population history of the city. Since 2000 the city has grown from 7.2 million to 9.0 million - that's a good 20%, and London within the city limits (not that this is a great measure of city size) now actually had more population than New York.
- b112 3y agoI wonder if the inner city driving tax, whatever it is called, could have reduced car parks.
- NeoTar 3y ago[Congestion Charge](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge) Not to be confused with the [Ultra Low Emission Zone](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_Low_Emission_Zone https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_Low_Emission_Zone) which also requires a fee to be paid to enter the city.
- barrkel 3y agoYeah, city limits is a terrible way to measure city size because it varies so much depending on how different countries like to partition and label things. On paper, Paris is much smaller than London (2 million vs 9 million), but Île-de-France has 12 million, but that in turn is a more expansive measure than Greater London. Inner London has 3.5 million. But London is basically a couple of significant cities with loads of towns and dense urban area in between and surrounding; Paris is structured quite differently.
- noelwelsh 3y agoLondon really grew in the Victorian era. E.g. http://www.demographia.com/dm-lon31.htm 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Martin-in-the-Fields
- mytailorisrich 3y ago" Henry VIII rebuilt the church in 1542 ... at this time it was literally "in the fields", occupying an isolated position between the cities of Westminster and London." In the 1550s the country was unrecognisable compared to now. England's total population was about 3 million, now London's population is 9 million (and was 100k then)... Edit: Apparently, wolves in England had just become extinct at the time...
- illwrks 3y agoIt makes you wonder what it will be like in another few hundred years... When we first moved to London (Zone 2/3) the place we lived in used to be a large apple orchard 100-150 years prior. Where we moved to after was on the grounds of a former nunnery then recouperation hospital. And now the area we're in used to be grazing fields 100 years ago.
- ido 3y agoIt 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.
- codetrotter 3y agoWhy?
- mstade 3y agoI 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.
- LilBytes 3y agoWhat 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.
- jwmoz 3y agoIt 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.
- iiiieu 3y agoYeah, who could ever afford a £8 ping on a SWE salary. /s
- vladvasiliu 3y agoI'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 bit. And since my cash is Euros, I always compared the prices as converted to euros, so this accounted for the conversion rate variations.
- kjkjadksj 3y agoIf you want cheap european beer just go to south europe. It will be cheaper than the water they charge you for.
- indy 3y agoThe last two decades were a world of low interest rates where people worked in offices and lived in expensive, high density flats. If commercial real estate has already peaked I wonder what the next two decades of development in London will look like?
- topicseed 3y agoThere's a lot of residential in these shots, too. Commercial skyscrapers are more "visible" but there's also plenty of residential being built. Now, it's not affordable and probably outside of most people's means, but it's there and making useless areas like Nine Elms somewhat of hot spots – not everybody's cuppa tea for sure, but some do like it for whatever reason(s).
- sdfghswe 3y agoInterest rates isn't the only input. Arguably population growth and regulation are more important than interest rates.
- jwmoz 3y agoWhen I moved here the Gherkin was an iconic building in the skyline. Now I can rarely see it, surrounded by other generic skyscrapers. I find it really sad they obscured it from vision.
- wdfx 3y agoI have similar feeling about the LLoyds of London building, which is within the same few blocks. In the late '80s/early '90s it was iconic as a newly different building. Now it is practically lost between other huge (and IMO completely soulless) buildings. I've enjoyed looking at these photos, but it also kinda makes me sad that there is such a massive drive to increase density in the city. I think I may be at a time of my life where I'm over being in or close to the capital.
- fidotron 3y agoAs another former Londoner reading this thread, I think the confusion is that we were told increasing density will increase the viability and availability of local services, but the opposite turns out to be true. The London of today has more per sq mile than twenty years ago in terms of floor space but in level of interesting activity it doesn't compare. I will admit the Shard is cool, but you are absolutely right about Lloyd's. Those of us of a certain age consider anything designed by Richard Rogers to look like the future we aspired to.
- wdfx 3y agoWhomever is downvoting, would you care to please join the conversation with your input rather than just pushing the vote buttons?
- gadders 3y agoI remember when the NatWest Tower (Tower 42) was the tallest building, but yes I think it's sad that the Gherkin is now hidden behind a bunch of boring box shaped skyscrapers.
- topicseed 3y ago
- AlexMuir 3y agoAlmost everything you see is residential. And in the case of the new office blocks (the Canary Wharf shots), the developers are seeking consent for residential conversions. Playing SimCity and building only residential zones doesn't tend to work out great.
- cassianoleal 3y agoHow much does SimCity take into account work-from-home?
- pjc50 3y agoAnd yet people in all those buildings are still commuting _inwards_. Otherwise they'd be living somewhere further away and cheaper.
- bombcar 3y agoIt's easier to convert residential to other uses than the other way around. So, if there's demand for housing, keep building housing until the demand dries up.
- fauigerzigerk 3y agoI see lots of new office buildings and sports facilities, so I was wondering what happened on the residential side. What I found is this dataset: Total Number of Dwellings and Net Additional Dwellings, Borough https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/net-additional-dwellings-borough https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/net-additional-dwellings-... It shows 614,474 net new dwellings between 2001/02 and 2021/22. Unfortunately, they don't appear to collect data on floor space at all. So this is less informative than it could be. The number of residents per dwelling has gone up from 2.4 to 2.5. between 2001 and 2020.
- mytailorisrich 3y agoMost of the new towers you see in the pictures are flats. For instance, around Wembley Stadium the vast majority are flats. Lots of (fancy) flats on the Isle of Dogs as well. It's mostly offices only in the City and Canary Wharf.
- cm2187 3y agoEven canary wharf. Most of the new sky scrappers are resi towers. Not many new office buildings.
- ido 3y agoWe often hear here (Berlin) that the housing affordability crisis is due to not building enough housing...Yet London apparently built loads in the last 20 years and it's still as unaffordable as ever (or even more than ever)? Is there any data showing that if we let loose and build a ton of housing that purchase prices and (especially) rents will reduce significantly? It's intuitively true but all the cities you can see a ton of construction in have also gone from "expensive" to "more expensive" at the same time. Did any major city people want to live in got more affordable (or stayed affordable) in the last 10-20 years?
- HPsquared 3y agoThe construction is a response to the high prices. Prices would be even higher without the construction that did happen.
- naillo 3y agoPeople like to say that people just have 'bullshit jobs' nowdays and I somewhat agree but this made me feel like there's actually a lot of work being done and progress being made.
- AverageDude 3y agoLet’s cut those “bullshit” jobs and see what happens to these people’s investments.
- HPsquared 3y agoUnproductive work is a financial drain, wouldn't it help investments to cut it? (We do have the problem of defining what's productive, though)... Economic calculation problem.
- Sakos 3y agoNo. Those "unproductive" workers spend their money which ends up driving labor growth because of the services and goods they pay for. If every company got rid of the "unproductive" workers and all the inefficiency, you'd have wide swaths of really unproductive unemployed who are unable to contribute to the economy in any way, as well as all the "saved" money going towards the wealthy.
- AverageDude 3y agoThus my comment. Let’s cut these “bullshit” jobs and have another French Revolution already.
- dools 3y agoThose people don’t know what they’re talking about
- mkj28 3y agoMaybe just Baader–Meinhof phenomenon, but I do see way more "Britain is still a great place to invest"-type of messages recently in various media, and it's always a sad reminder of Brexit :(
- fguerraz 3y agoIs that a photo essay on the commercial real-estate bubble?
- 666_666_666 3y agoi did not see much change, check out nyc
- gadders 3y agoOne thing that always surprises me when you see London from on-high is how flat it is. Barely any hills at all.
- NeoTar 3y agoYep - Greater London does have some hills, especially in the outer boroughs, but most of the highest points that are not within a couple of kilometres of the border are all under 140m high.
- gadders 3y agoYeah - what's the big one nearby? Hampstead Heath? That seems to have views over London.
- NeoTar 3y agoThat's the highest point that could reasonably be described as central - 137m For the rest see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest_points_in_London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest_points_in_Lond...
- denton-scratch 3y agoYes, Highgate/Hampstead. Less-elevated are Highbury Hill, Muswell Hill and Ally Pally. Basically there's a row of hills across North London. Most of London is flat because it's part of the estuary of a major river; the bedrock is buried under an awful lot of silt and clay.
- csomar 3y agoSame with Paris?
- varispeed 3y agoThe 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 could be alright, but it doesn't have a bathroom and a sink. How are you supposed to work if you can't even wash your hands or you have to go to another building to do it? It's like everyone thinks here the jobs of future will feature a person with a laptop hot desking. Madness.
- spacebanana7 3y ago> There is nothing build that would be for workshops or light manufacturing. Large capital cities are generally terrible places for manufacturing. Real estate is competitive, transport is congested and labour is expensive. That's why most Chinese products come from tier 3 cities unless there's a really special need for skilled labour or a legacy factory happened to be built 15-20 years ago when the tier 1/2 cities were smaller.
- nimbleplum40 3y ago> 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.
- varispeed 3y agoThe 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.
- 3y ago
- xdennis 3y agoSome have changed a little, some a lot. I compared one set of before/after and was surprised how much has changed: all the buildings seem to have changed in that one... until I noticed I was comparing images from two different locations. :)
- SilverBirch 3y agoIt's fascinating how boom and bust this is. You look at the City, or at King's Cross and there's just been a total transformation. Then you look at Nine Elms or Highbury and really very little has changed. You've got Wembley - massively built up, loads of carparks gone and building in it's place. Then you've got the Millenium Dome, one big car park in 2007, one big car park in 2023.
- kmlx 3y ago> Then you look at Nine Elms or Highbury and really very little has changed. https://nineelmslondon.com/transformation/ https://nineelmslondon.com/transformation/
- sdfghswe 3y agoOddly specific that you happened to have such a link in your pocket.
- jinder 3y agoWhat bust are you referring to? As far as I can tell there's still considerable development going on all around London.
- kmlx 3y agoi 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 where there is so much construction taking place in every single corner of the city.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoIt's astounding how much greener it is in the pictures. It can take trees ~30 years to reach maturity where they can span across an entire street. I assumed that part of the reason the nicer neighborhoods in the EU and most the US were so nice is because they had always been green and nice. But maybe it only takes ~10 years or so? Not familiar with London, but looking at the pictures, it looks like maybe this is a relatively new thing? If so, that's kind of exciting, because I figured it might take way longer for other parts of other cities to become as nice and pleasant as the select few crazy expensive neighborhoods we all love.
- leoedin 3y agoThat caught my eye - but I think in most cases it's just the time of year the photo was taken. Most trees are deciduous and none of the streets are particularly green in November - March. Obviously actual building sites (like the olympic park in the first picture) excepted.
- detritus 3y agoLondon's been a very green city for decades, if not a hundred years, because of planting done when victoirian development started. If anything, the last years seem to have had a reduction in tree cover, to fit in all of these new developements. The saplings carelessly planted in their place will take decades to reach maturation.
- jccalhoun 3y agoI grew up in the rural midwest and one day I was with my parents on some back road. Dad pointed to a woods and told me that when he was a kid that was a field. So it only took a 30 or so years for it to turn back into woods.
- 37172598throw 3y agoThe actual seat of the Empire..
- ujnproduct 3y agoBeautiful.
- andromaton 3y agoThe 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.
- contingencies 3y agoSo named because it's where they keep the financial services people, who are now the only ones who can afford to make noise at 3AM. Fun fact: if you head east from there, things get pretty damn ghetto pretty quickly. Like, you don't want your car to break down, "projects"-level ghetto. Then it all fades away to the peculiar English joy of Essex. But make no mistake, there's some serious ghetto really close to the money. Note also, this is the area that was bombed most heavily during the war due to its position to the east of town. The German bombers would drop their loads and turn around ASAP to minimize time exposed to AA fire. A septuagenarian I know who grew up there described it as a child's playground composed of a wonderland of overgrown, bombed out buildings.
- gregulrajani 3y agoThis atlas of Edinburgh let’s you precisely switch between aerials from the 40s, 90 and modern times. I find it a wonderful waste of time https://cityofedinburgh.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=783e530d92994246bcaeb7419437fd78 https://cityofedinburgh.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/in...
- syspec 3y agotook me a while to realize the red lines on top of the pictures, were not artifacts but red cranes!