9 ms·

The article talks a lot about cities now being the domain only of "one-percenters" and "global elite". This is demonstrably false. Consider the UK. UK's popula

The article talks a lot about cities now being the domain only of "one-percenters" and "global elite". This is demonstrably false. Consider the UK. UK's population: 62 million London population: 8 million 13% of the UK's population, therefore, resides in London. To say that only the "1%" can afford London is clearly not the case. In France's case, 15% of the population live in Paris. Perhaps we can't all live in London's Chelsea and whatever the most desirable part of Paris is. But both cities have excellent public transport...

seren 13y ago
The 15% you are quoting is for the 'Greater Paris', i.e. Paris and its suburbs, both rich and poor. The intramuros, i.e. inside the city limits, population of Paris as described in the article is about 2 millions people, about 3% of the population. We are closer to the 'few percenters'.
SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
> To say that only the "1%" can afford London is clearly not the case. ORLY. Consider the London borough of Camden. "40% of children are under the poverty line, but average house prices have just hit £1m." http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/21/mervyn-king-housing-warning-fannie-mae http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/21/mervyn-k... http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/05/hous-m24.html?view=print http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/05/hous-m24.html?view=p... In other words, you can afford to "live" in London so long as you pay your salary on rent for a small, shabby flat and give up hope of settling or owning in London. You'll be the underclass who can always be moved on or moved out next year if the owners decide. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/feb/13/london-council-relocation-benefits-cap http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/feb/13/london-council-relo...
- sturadnidge 13y ago
  Not exactly, either the above or you can live in central London if you are on government benefits - the civic planning here is pretty messed up, I appreciate the idealism of forcibly mixing socio-economic classes by mandating council housing be placed amidst regular housing in every borough, but it seems insane that it's the workers who are getting pushed further and further out. Not suggesting the unemployed should.
  - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
    In many ways, social democracy was quite a good model that has completely failed to adapt to the existence of the working poor.
dabeeeenster 13y ago
Most young Londoners cannot afford to buy property anywhere near the center of the city any more. I employ several, and see this first hand. In 2001 I bought a flat for (at the time quite a lot of money!) £200,000. I could just about afford it on a developer salary at the very peak of the dot-com boom. I sold it a few years later. Now that flat is worth about £700,000. This article is accurate as far as London is concerned.
- makomk 13y ago
  Most youg Londoners cannot afford to buy property full stop. Unlike in the rest of the country, the majority of residents rent rather than own their homes.
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  Now that flat is [priced at: ed. corr.] about £700,000. Fix 5d6c334... price/value correction.
rdouble 13y ago
The 1% buy multiple properties in many different cities. There have been articles about how the City of London has neighborhoods of empty luxury apartment developments owned by various sheikhs and russian/central asian commodities oligarchs. In SF when you buy a house you are also competing with dozens of investors from overseas paying cash who don't have any intention of ever living there. I believe that the Vancouver real estate market was also affected by overseas investors in a similar way, making it the least affordable housing market in North America. Multiply this speculative real estate investment by 1% of 7 billion and it could very well be a major factor in pushing up rents, especially in certain super desirable cities like Paris. There's about 1.7 million residences there. Even if only 1% of the 1% want a pied a terre there, the rest of the people trying to live there would feel the squeeze. I have personally seen the effects of this. When I lived in on South 4th street in Williamsburg Brooklyn in 1998, my floor through apartment was $700/m. Now the same apartment is renting for $3700 a month. That particular street is still a dump! The only people I know who can afford to live in nice apartments in SoHo or Tribeca are the children of super rich people.
- subsystem 13y ago
  Note that the City of London is in some ways a tax haven and a neighborhood in London itself.
  - contingencies 13y ago
    Interesting tangent! Any refs on the tax situation?
    - CmdrKrool 13y ago
      Here's an article: http://www.newstatesman.com/economy/2011/02/london-corporation-city http://www.newstatesman.com/economy/2011/02/london-corporati...
      - contingencies 13y ago
        Cheers. That one was 'By Nicholas Shaxson Published 24 February 2011', conclusion: UK Uncut, the spontaneous protest movement opposing offshore tax avoidance by multinationals, has had an impact and now pledges to move against the banks. A big "One London" campaign to merge a divided capital into a single democratic entity may seem far off, but groups such as London Citizens are now thinking about the fairer division of London. The Tax Justice Network, and others, are helping build an intellectual edifice for understanding tax havens. Some of their goals - such as country-by-country reporting by multinationals - are already being partly met. The unions, too, and big NGOs, especially those working in international development, are engaging with the matter. An anti-haven mobilisation is under way in France; something similar may be starting in the US. The IMF, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the EU and other agencies are now at least debating issues they ignored before. Around the world, legislators, regulators and ordinary people are starting to see the toxicity of Britain's role in protecting offshore business that drains billions out of developing countries each year. I wonder if there's been any positive development.
andyking 13y ago
Even if my pay was doubled, I wouldn't be able to afford to live in or near London. However, I can afford a comfortable lifestyle in rural Yorkshire (house, car, holidays, internet access, good food, days out etc etc) on a modest pay packet. The rent for my 17th century cottage with garden in a Yorkshire village wouldn't get me a room in a shared house in an undesirable part of London. I don't understand the pull of the capital. It's overcrowded, noisy and dirty, even in its 'desirable' areas. The oil sheikhs and Russian oligarchs can keep it. I'd much rather live up here even if I had enough money to live in London!
- simonbarker87 13y ago
  Couldn't agree more, I live in Newcastle (Upon Tyne) and wonder why all my friends headed down south after uni - for "the salary" was their reasoning but none of them have savings and their salary goes into rent, commuting and maintain an expensive social life. I'd much rather be here in Newcastle and be able to afford to live and save - just wish the weather were a little better
  - twic 13y ago
    It's great that you two feel that way. As someone who grew up in cities in the south and now lives in London, i'd rather saw my own leg off than live in rural Yorkshire. There just isn't anything there that appeals to me. Newcastle would be less scary - i'd only give up a foot to avoid living there. This is not in any way a slight against either Yorkshire or Newcastle. Just an observation that one man's meat is another man's poison.
    - petercooper 13y ago
      Rxactly. I felt the same when, as a teenager, my parents moved from Surrey to rural Lincolnshire and I had to go along for the ride. 15 years on, I now love living in such a rural area (and also married with kids!) but it's pointless if you want to easily see the latest bands, have a large and sophisticated social circle, easily meet people you do non-rural business with, enjoy the latest in fashion or food, easily travel to other places without driving, etc.. On the flip side, I can easily go off roading, take my daughters to see farm animals every week, zero traffic jams, low crime, low cost of living, etc, so it's all swings and roundabouts! (And we even have fibre Internet, oddly, so it even ticks my geek box ;-))
ealexhudson 13y ago
Others have said, but I'll add: this is accurate for London. Greater London is a large area, the actual inner city is totally unaffordable by anyone's definition. Even GL is largely unaffordable. House prices defy gravity, and rents are going up, at a time when Govt. is cutting housing benefit severely (which should result in net lower demand) - most London boroughs have a large outflow of socially housed tenants of various forms. The average London property price is $785k (USD). There are a number of boroughs in London where the average is double that. And, due to the way the Govt. is blowing up the mortgage market, owning is actually cheaper than renting (so long as you have the deposit... for now; next year, Govt. will give you that as well). 13% of the population may be in Greater London. Large numbers of them are moving out; current affordability is incredibly bad.
vixen99 13y ago
A 2009 report said that 40% of London's families are on housing support. So these people live there because someone else pays.
- _progger_ 13y ago
  And the payers is not the type with accounts and charities to use for tax dodging.
makomk 13y ago
Not all of London's population was originally British - it's quite popular with international multi-millionaires, who don't have to deal with the same restrictive immigration rules everyone else does. Also, a lot of people who're living in London can't really afford to do so; unfortunately it's where most of the jobs are and commuting into London by rail is just as horrendously expensive as living there.
gadders 13y ago
Up until shortly, it was also the case that if you were on state benefits (specifically housing benefit) you could afford to live in a nice neighbourhood in London as the state paid your rent for you. Fortunately this is being capped now so that non-working people will be subject to the same issues as working people.
- twic 13y ago
  Your fingers seem to have slipped while typing "rather worse issues".
mathattack 13y ago
It's the 1% that can afford to move in. That's what's skewing the article. In Manhattan, there are very few buyers who make less than $400k/year as a couple. That's about the cutoff for the 1%. This doom and gloom in the article is neither new, nor entirely accurate. The popular consensus (I wish I had the link handy!) in NYC is financial services employment rises and falls 1 to 1 with artistic employment. The causality is probably reversed though. The growth of one helps the other. Gentrification is nothing new.
alan_cx 13y ago
To be clear, before I start: I'm not in the anti-immigrant, finger pointing, blame every one else camp what so ever. Call me a mental hippy, but I believe people should be able to go, in a country sense, where they like on this planet. What I don't understand here is that there have been reports and articles about how the white working classes are being forced out of London (That would be Greater London, not central London, which one would expect to be loony priced) by immigrants, who are supposed to be either dole scroungers or taking "our British jobs" from our "British people" by working for dirty cheap, while changing London in to Londonistan. Well, if that is true, then how do they afford London? OK, I can already pick all that apart myself, I didn't work to hard at fleshing out such insanity, but clearly there is some contradiction there, right? There are a hell of a lot of poor people, born and immigrant, who manage to live in London.
- mason55 13y ago
  > Well, if that is true, then how do they afford London? It's just like the jobs. The immigrants are willing to deal with conditions that the natives aren't, for many reasons. For example, I live in NYC Chinatown. There are buildings set up where they section off an entire floor into 8 foot by 8 foot rooms with a shared kitchen & bathroom. Most Americans would never live there but the immigrant Chinese are happy to because it's still an improvement over where they came from.
  - yardie 13y ago
    I used to live in Manhattan Chinatown. Are those places still around? I ask because even Chinatown is becoming increasingly expensive. I think in most of those "studios" the landlord has cashed out and sold the property for redevelopment. No way that even 20 poor immigrants can pay the rent of a single Wall street trader. Also the city was cracking down on those slumlords because most of them were rife with code violations.
    - mason55 13y ago
      There are still a few that I'm aware of but you're right that luxury buildings are going up. 138 E Broadway and 55 Hester being two of the newest examples.
redbad 13y ago
Thanks for your pedantry. It really adds some signal to the noise.
Nursie 13y ago
Most of the normal folks are being pushed further and further out of the city every year. Anywhere remotely central is out of reach of anyone but the very rich.

seren 13y ago

The 15% you are quoting is for the 'Greater Paris', i.e. Paris and its suburbs, both rich and poor. The intramuros, i.e. inside the city limits, population of Paris as described in the article is about 2 millions people, about 3% of the population. We are closer to the 'few percenters'.

SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago

> To say that only the "1%" can afford London is clearly not the case. ORLY. Consider the London borough of Camden. "40% of children are under the poverty line, but average house prices have just hit £1m." http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/21/mervyn-king-housing-warning-fannie-mae http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/21/mervyn-k... http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/05/hous-m24.html?view=print http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/05/hous-m24.html?view=p... In other words, you can afford to "live" in London so long as you pay your salary on rent for a small, shabby flat and give up hope of settling or owning in London. You'll be the underclass who can always be moved on or moved out next year if the owners decide. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/feb/13/london-council-relocation-benefits-cap http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/feb/13/london-council-relo...

sturadnidge 13y ago
Not exactly, either the above or you can live in central London if you are on government benefits - the civic planning here is pretty messed up, I appreciate the idealism of forcibly mixing socio-economic classes by mandating council housing be placed amidst regular housing in every borough, but it seems insane that it's the workers who are getting pushed further and further out. Not suggesting the unemployed should.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  In many ways, social democracy was quite a good model that has completely failed to adapt to the existence of the working poor.

dabeeeenster 13y ago

Most young Londoners cannot afford to buy property anywhere near the center of the city any more. I employ several, and see this first hand. In 2001 I bought a flat for (at the time quite a lot of money!) £200,000. I could just about afford it on a developer salary at the very peak of the dot-com boom. I sold it a few years later. Now that flat is worth about £700,000. This article is accurate as far as London is concerned.

makomk 13y ago
Most youg Londoners cannot afford to buy property full stop. Unlike in the rest of the country, the majority of residents rent rather than own their homes.
michaelochurch 13y ago
Now that flat is [priced at: ed. corr.] about £700,000. Fix 5d6c334... price/value correction.

rdouble 13y ago

The 1% buy multiple properties in many different cities. There have been articles about how the City of London has neighborhoods of empty luxury apartment developments owned by various sheikhs and russian/central asian commodities oligarchs. In SF when you buy a house you are also competing with dozens of investors from overseas paying cash who don't have any intention of ever living there. I believe that the Vancouver real estate market was also affected by overseas investors in a similar way, making it the least affordable housing market in North America. Multiply this speculative real estate investment by 1% of 7 billion and it could very well be a major factor in pushing up rents, especially in certain super desirable cities like Paris. There's about 1.7 million residences there. Even if only 1% of the 1% want a pied a terre there, the rest of the people trying to live there would feel the squeeze. I have personally seen the effects of this. When I lived in on South 4th street in Williamsburg Brooklyn in 1998, my floor through apartment was $700/m. Now the same apartment is renting for $3700 a month. That particular street is still a dump! The only people I know who can afford to live in nice apartments in SoHo or Tribeca are the children of super rich people.

subsystem 13y ago
Note that the City of London is in some ways a tax haven and a neighborhood in London itself.
- contingencies 13y ago
  Interesting tangent! Any refs on the tax situation?
  - CmdrKrool 13y ago
    Here's an article: http://www.newstatesman.com/economy/2011/02/london-corporation-city http://www.newstatesman.com/economy/2011/02/london-corporati...
    - contingencies 13y ago
      Cheers. That one was 'By Nicholas Shaxson Published 24 February 2011', conclusion: UK Uncut, the spontaneous protest movement opposing offshore tax avoidance by multinationals, has had an impact and now pledges to move against the banks. A big "One London" campaign to merge a divided capital into a single democratic entity may seem far off, but groups such as London Citizens are now thinking about the fairer division of London. The Tax Justice Network, and others, are helping build an intellectual edifice for understanding tax havens. Some of their goals - such as country-by-country reporting by multinationals - are already being partly met. The unions, too, and big NGOs, especially those working in international development, are engaging with the matter. An anti-haven mobilisation is under way in France; something similar may be starting in the US. The IMF, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the EU and other agencies are now at least debating issues they ignored before. Around the world, legislators, regulators and ordinary people are starting to see the toxicity of Britain's role in protecting offshore business that drains billions out of developing countries each year. I wonder if there's been any positive development.

andyking 13y ago

Even if my pay was doubled, I wouldn't be able to afford to live in or near London. However, I can afford a comfortable lifestyle in rural Yorkshire (house, car, holidays, internet access, good food, days out etc etc) on a modest pay packet. The rent for my 17th century cottage with garden in a Yorkshire village wouldn't get me a room in a shared house in an undesirable part of London. I don't understand the pull of the capital. It's overcrowded, noisy and dirty, even in its 'desirable' areas. The oil sheikhs and Russian oligarchs can keep it. I'd much rather live up here even if I had enough money to live in London!

simonbarker87 13y ago
Couldn't agree more, I live in Newcastle (Upon Tyne) and wonder why all my friends headed down south after uni - for "the salary" was their reasoning but none of them have savings and their salary goes into rent, commuting and maintain an expensive social life. I'd much rather be here in Newcastle and be able to afford to live and save - just wish the weather were a little better
- twic 13y ago
  It's great that you two feel that way. As someone who grew up in cities in the south and now lives in London, i'd rather saw my own leg off than live in rural Yorkshire. There just isn't anything there that appeals to me. Newcastle would be less scary - i'd only give up a foot to avoid living there. This is not in any way a slight against either Yorkshire or Newcastle. Just an observation that one man's meat is another man's poison.
  - petercooper 13y ago
    Rxactly. I felt the same when, as a teenager, my parents moved from Surrey to rural Lincolnshire and I had to go along for the ride. 15 years on, I now love living in such a rural area (and also married with kids!) but it's pointless if you want to easily see the latest bands, have a large and sophisticated social circle, easily meet people you do non-rural business with, enjoy the latest in fashion or food, easily travel to other places without driving, etc.. On the flip side, I can easily go off roading, take my daughters to see farm animals every week, zero traffic jams, low crime, low cost of living, etc, so it's all swings and roundabouts! (And we even have fibre Internet, oddly, so it even ticks my geek box ;-))

ealexhudson 13y ago

Others have said, but I'll add: this is accurate for London. Greater London is a large area, the actual inner city is totally unaffordable by anyone's definition. Even GL is largely unaffordable. House prices defy gravity, and rents are going up, at a time when Govt. is cutting housing benefit severely (which should result in net lower demand) - most London boroughs have a large outflow of socially housed tenants of various forms. The average London property price is $785k (USD). There are a number of boroughs in London where the average is double that. And, due to the way the Govt. is blowing up the mortgage market, owning is actually cheaper than renting (so long as you have the deposit... for now; next year, Govt. will give you that as well). 13% of the population may be in Greater London. Large numbers of them are moving out; current affordability is incredibly bad.

vixen99 13y ago

A 2009 report said that 40% of London's families are on housing support. So these people live there because someone else pays.

_progger_ 13y ago
And the payers is not the type with accounts and charities to use for tax dodging.

makomk 13y ago

Not all of London's population was originally British - it's quite popular with international multi-millionaires, who don't have to deal with the same restrictive immigration rules everyone else does. Also, a lot of people who're living in London can't really afford to do so; unfortunately it's where most of the jobs are and commuting into London by rail is just as horrendously expensive as living there.

gadders 13y ago

Up until shortly, it was also the case that if you were on state benefits (specifically housing benefit) you could afford to live in a nice neighbourhood in London as the state paid your rent for you. Fortunately this is being capped now so that non-working people will be subject to the same issues as working people.

twic 13y ago
Your fingers seem to have slipped while typing "rather worse issues".

mathattack 13y ago

It's the 1% that can afford to move in. That's what's skewing the article. In Manhattan, there are very few buyers who make less than $400k/year as a couple. That's about the cutoff for the 1%. This doom and gloom in the article is neither new, nor entirely accurate. The popular consensus (I wish I had the link handy!) in NYC is financial services employment rises and falls 1 to 1 with artistic employment. The causality is probably reversed though. The growth of one helps the other. Gentrification is nothing new.

alan_cx 13y ago

To be clear, before I start: I'm not in the anti-immigrant, finger pointing, blame every one else camp what so ever. Call me a mental hippy, but I believe people should be able to go, in a country sense, where they like on this planet. What I don't understand here is that there have been reports and articles about how the white working classes are being forced out of London (That would be Greater London, not central London, which one would expect to be loony priced) by immigrants, who are supposed to be either dole scroungers or taking "our British jobs" from our "British people" by working for dirty cheap, while changing London in to Londonistan. Well, if that is true, then how do they afford London? OK, I can already pick all that apart myself, I didn't work to hard at fleshing out such insanity, but clearly there is some contradiction there, right? There are a hell of a lot of poor people, born and immigrant, who manage to live in London.

mason55 13y ago
> Well, if that is true, then how do they afford London? It's just like the jobs. The immigrants are willing to deal with conditions that the natives aren't, for many reasons. For example, I live in NYC Chinatown. There are buildings set up where they section off an entire floor into 8 foot by 8 foot rooms with a shared kitchen & bathroom. Most Americans would never live there but the immigrant Chinese are happy to because it's still an improvement over where they came from.
- yardie 13y ago
  I used to live in Manhattan Chinatown. Are those places still around? I ask because even Chinatown is becoming increasingly expensive. I think in most of those "studios" the landlord has cashed out and sold the property for redevelopment. No way that even 20 poor immigrants can pay the rent of a single Wall street trader. Also the city was cracking down on those slumlords because most of them were rife with code violations.
  - mason55 13y ago
    There are still a few that I'm aware of but you're right that luxury buildings are going up. 138 E Broadway and 55 Hester being two of the newest examples.

redbad 13y ago

Thanks for your pedantry. It really adds some signal to the noise.

Nursie 13y ago

Most of the normal folks are being pushed further and further out of the city every year. Anywhere remotely central is out of reach of anyone but the very rich.