7 ms·

Data maps that sum up London

99 points by fredley 12y ago

guard-of-terra 12y ago
"What passport do you hold" seems to deny the existence of post-soviet states and Russia. Are they tucked under "other european"? Same for tweets maps.
- gambiting 12y ago
  Well, Turkey is included in Europe even though most of it is in Asia, so Russia should be included under Europe too. Unless the number is so insignificant that it's just bundled with "Other Europe".
  - oblio 12y ago
    Well, Lithuania is listed directly, Estonia and Latvia are probably in "Other EU New Members", Ukraine, Russia and Belarus are probably in "Other Europe", Kazakhstan & co are probably in "Central Asia". My guess is that they selected some of those groups to prove a point. I doubt that there are more Romanians (3000) than Russians (presumably part of the 55000-strong "Other Europe" group).
    - DanBC 12y ago
      http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census-analysis/social-and-economic-characteristics-by-length-of-residence-of-migrant-populations-in-england-and-wales/characteristics-by-length-of-residence-of-migrant-populations.html http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census-analysis/so... You can get the data directly from here.
      - oblio 12y ago
        To be honest in those Excel files they provide I don't see more info. I mean there's no breakdown by country except for something like the top 10 countries. But I don't see Romania or Russia (for example) in them.
    - notahacker 12y ago
      This different dataset puts the Russian nationals resident in London as in 2011 at 15,000 +/- 4000 (no indication of how dual nationals are treated) http://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/population-nationality/resource/6fb7c2dc-b866-4381-9d43-36517ae16627 http://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/population-nationality/res... The Russian population probably is included in "Other Europe" but probably isn't as big as people think based on the spending power of a Russian minority in Belgravia...
- muyuu 12y ago
  They're relatively few outside of the City and Canary Wharf. Baltics are significant and they're listed.
monk_e_boy 12y ago
It's so weird to think people live in London. That they get up in the morning and look around and think 'this is my home'... London (and New York) are almost as real as Hobbiton in my mind. You must wake up and see people, walk out the door and see people, walk and walk and walk and see people everywhere you go. Do they all just blend into the background? How do you live with so many lives intersecting with yours? Some days I go to <location> and it is busy with people. Having fun, dogs barking, kids shouting. So I think, "You know what, I'll come back later. When there's no one here."
- fredley 12y ago
  You're right, they do blend into the background somewhat. I can't imagine what it was like before modern devices though. When I get on the bus, usually no matter how crowded it is I can just about manage to squeeze open my phone/kindle with one hand while hanging on to something with the other, allowing me reasonably good escapism from the horror of the situation. In the 1930's London was more populated than it is now, and there were no devices. It was probably a lot smellier, louder and grimier too. I can't imagine coping in that city.
- bollix 12y ago
  I lived in London for a year. It was the most lonely isolated place I've lived. Also it's not really part of the UK anymore. It's a "world" city - which makes the feeling of loneliness even worse.
  - muyuu 12y ago
    Yeah well, that's pretty much all big cities when you arrive on your own, especially after student age. It's also very expensive to move around, and at this it's one of the worst places.
    - Symbiote 12y ago
      London is cheaper to move around by public transport than many other British cities. A bus or tram journey is £1.45 regardless of distance, but in Manchester a tram journey is over £3, in Birmingham over £2, in Edinburgh £1.50. London's tickets are also much better integrated -- only a couple of express train services to airports have special fares, and they all have non-express, cheaper alternatives.
dmacedo 12y ago
Moved to London this past January; still have so much to get to know in the city, I find these fascinating! ;)
barking 12y ago
In my experience there is very little sense of community in London. For example, I once travelled on the tube in London and on the underground in Liverpool on the same day. In Liverpool people were chatting with fellow passengers. In London there was silence.
- bollix 12y ago
  I don't know why you're being downvoted. It's true. If you want community, don't live in a city. Live in a small town or village where everyone knows everyone else.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    There are plenty of smaller towns with a sense of community in London. It's mainly the centre that is a sterile wasteland.
  - barking 12y ago
    I think It's because someone thought I was dragging things off topic a bit. I probably was. Having lived there it has almost exclusively negative connotations for me. I didn't live in a great area though.
- muyuu 12y ago
  It happens in London as well, mostly outside of commute time. But yeah, there's no real sense of community in London, or in any big city really. Neighbours don't even know each other more often than not. There's pros and cons to this "anonymity" but it's nothing new nor exclusive to London. A lot of people actually like it this way.
- chrisseaton 12y ago
  Some people prefer it that way. I live in Liverpool and I find people on the underground there very nosey and intrusive.
  - barking 12y ago
    Like parents then.Upsides and downsides. And similarly you might not realise what you've lost till it's gone. Liverpool is a warm friendly city.
kitd 12y ago
Distribution by marital status is interesting. I always thought it was a bit of a stereotype, young-trendies near the city centre, happily-marrieds out in the 'burbs. All borne out by the data though.
- muyuu 12y ago
  For anything with 2+ bedrooms, 95% of the people are priced out of zones 1-2.
ajeet_dhaliwal 12y ago
I live and work in London. I was born and grew up here but lived away for a while too. It's a great city but for anyone wanting to do something entrepreneurial it's not possible to live too cheaply and so quitting a job to focus on a start up is difficult unless you already have funds or support.
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  As a recent transplant to London I was surprised at how 'cheap' it is. Obviously it's more expensive that other places but not prohibitively. I'm living in a decent flat share in Zone 2 and with rent, food, and travel to/from work each day it's costing about £1000 per month. Working from home working on a startup I could shave about £250 from that. And my living conditions are much, much better than some of the people I've read about on HN trying to get a startup off the ground in SF living off noodles and sharing a room with several people.
  - notahacker 12y ago
    Depends on the lifestyle you're looking to lead. If a rented room in a shared house is adequate for your needs then the annual premium you're paying for that room to be in central London is probably less than the cost of an annual train ticket from outside London, or the lower salary you'd expect in a different city. If you're a young family, on the other hand then you could buy the freehold of a three bed house somewhere like Burnley for little more than the annual rental of a similarly unremarkable small house or flat in a not-especially-fashionable Zone 2 suburb. You'd just then have to cope with living in Burnley :-) The ramen-eating room sharers in SF will probably also be better off than their London counterparts when they get funding (more likely) and can afford to pay themselves salaries linked to a much higher market rate for developers.
fractalsea 12y ago
Compared to the maps of living-area-by-race in the US [1], it seems like there is much less segregation between black and white people in London. I wonder why this is the case? Also, I wonder why there is still heavy segregation in regards to the Asian populations in London. I should add that the apparent mixing between blacks and whites could be because the grey and blue dots look too similar in the London map, but I still think there is more mixing than in the US. [1] http://www.wired.com/2013/08/how-segregated-is-your-city-this-eye-opening-map-shows-you/#slideid-210281 http://www.wired.com/2013/08/how-segregated-is-your-city-thi...
- Cuuugi 12y ago
  Theres a much heavier contingent of Asian (specifically Indian) immigrants to the UK. People tend to cling to familiarity in foreign lands. As for the Black/White dynamic i have no idea. Source:My Butt
- hcho 12y ago
  The social housing policies in the UK deliberately tried to tackle social segregation. You would see council blocks 2 streets away in the poshest of the areas. South Asian and Caribbean populations are overrepresented as users of social housing in London as the jobs they were brought in to do don't exist anymore.
  - fractalsea 12y ago
    Interesting. That is probably the reason why ex-councel houses are rented out for so much money after they are bought from the council. They are often in very desirable areas. I wonder what the measurable/measured effects of this deliberate integrated housing system have been. I.e. there most have been some objects, and I wonder if they were met.
custardcream 12y ago
Useless page. The mobile version does a poor job of compressing the images resulting in the data labels being unreadable. Bring on SVG for this sort of stuff.

99 points by fredley 12y ago

"What passport do you hold" seems to deny the existence of post-soviet states and Russia. Are they tucked under "other european"? Same for tweets maps.

gambiting 12y ago
Well, Turkey is included in Europe even though most of it is in Asia, so Russia should be included under Europe too. Unless the number is so insignificant that it's just bundled with "Other Europe".
- oblio 12y ago
  Well, Lithuania is listed directly, Estonia and Latvia are probably in "Other EU New Members", Ukraine, Russia and Belarus are probably in "Other Europe", Kazakhstan & co are probably in "Central Asia". My guess is that they selected some of those groups to prove a point. I doubt that there are more Romanians (3000) than Russians (presumably part of the 55000-strong "Other Europe" group).
  - DanBC 12y ago
    http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census-analysis/social-and-economic-characteristics-by-length-of-residence-of-migrant-populations-in-england-and-wales/characteristics-by-length-of-residence-of-migrant-populations.html http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census-analysis/so... You can get the data directly from here.
    - oblio 12y ago
      To be honest in those Excel files they provide I don't see more info. I mean there's no breakdown by country except for something like the top 10 countries. But I don't see Romania or Russia (for example) in them.
  - notahacker 12y ago
    This different dataset puts the Russian nationals resident in London as in 2011 at 15,000 +/- 4000 (no indication of how dual nationals are treated) http://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/population-nationality/resource/6fb7c2dc-b866-4381-9d43-36517ae16627 http://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/population-nationality/res... The Russian population probably is included in "Other Europe" but probably isn't as big as people think based on the spending power of a Russian minority in Belgravia...
muyuu 12y ago
They're relatively few outside of the City and Canary Wharf. Baltics are significant and they're listed.

monk_e_boy 12y ago

It's so weird to think people live in London. That they get up in the morning and look around and think 'this is my home'... London (and New York) are almost as real as Hobbiton in my mind. You must wake up and see people, walk out the door and see people, walk and walk and walk and see people everywhere you go. Do they all just blend into the background? How do you live with so many lives intersecting with yours? Some days I go to <location> and it is busy with people. Having fun, dogs barking, kids shouting. So I think, "You know what, I'll come back later. When there's no one here."

fredley 12y ago
You're right, they do blend into the background somewhat. I can't imagine what it was like before modern devices though. When I get on the bus, usually no matter how crowded it is I can just about manage to squeeze open my phone/kindle with one hand while hanging on to something with the other, allowing me reasonably good escapism from the horror of the situation. In the 1930's London was more populated than it is now, and there were no devices. It was probably a lot smellier, louder and grimier too. I can't imagine coping in that city.
bollix 12y ago
I lived in London for a year. It was the most lonely isolated place I've lived. Also it's not really part of the UK anymore. It's a "world" city - which makes the feeling of loneliness even worse.
- muyuu 12y ago
  Yeah well, that's pretty much all big cities when you arrive on your own, especially after student age. It's also very expensive to move around, and at this it's one of the worst places.
  - Symbiote 12y ago
    London is cheaper to move around by public transport than many other British cities. A bus or tram journey is £1.45 regardless of distance, but in Manchester a tram journey is over £3, in Birmingham over £2, in Edinburgh £1.50. London's tickets are also much better integrated -- only a couple of express train services to airports have special fares, and they all have non-express, cheaper alternatives.

dmacedo 12y ago

Moved to London this past January; still have so much to get to know in the city, I find these fascinating! ;)

barking 12y ago

In my experience there is very little sense of community in London. For example, I once travelled on the tube in London and on the underground in Liverpool on the same day. In Liverpool people were chatting with fellow passengers. In London there was silence.

bollix 12y ago
I don't know why you're being downvoted. It's true. If you want community, don't live in a city. Live in a small town or village where everyone knows everyone else.
- vidarh 12y ago
  There are plenty of smaller towns with a sense of community in London. It's mainly the centre that is a sterile wasteland.
- barking 12y ago
  I think It's because someone thought I was dragging things off topic a bit. I probably was. Having lived there it has almost exclusively negative connotations for me. I didn't live in a great area though.
muyuu 12y ago
It happens in London as well, mostly outside of commute time. But yeah, there's no real sense of community in London, or in any big city really. Neighbours don't even know each other more often than not. There's pros and cons to this "anonymity" but it's nothing new nor exclusive to London. A lot of people actually like it this way.
chrisseaton 12y ago
Some people prefer it that way. I live in Liverpool and I find people on the underground there very nosey and intrusive.
- barking 12y ago
  Like parents then.Upsides and downsides. And similarly you might not realise what you've lost till it's gone. Liverpool is a warm friendly city.

kitd 12y ago

Distribution by marital status is interesting. I always thought it was a bit of a stereotype, young-trendies near the city centre, happily-marrieds out in the 'burbs. All borne out by the data though.

muyuu 12y ago
For anything with 2+ bedrooms, 95% of the people are priced out of zones 1-2.

ajeet_dhaliwal 12y ago

I live and work in London. I was born and grew up here but lived away for a while too. It's a great city but for anyone wanting to do something entrepreneurial it's not possible to live too cheaply and so quitting a job to focus on a start up is difficult unless you already have funds or support.

k-mcgrady 12y ago
As a recent transplant to London I was surprised at how 'cheap' it is. Obviously it's more expensive that other places but not prohibitively. I'm living in a decent flat share in Zone 2 and with rent, food, and travel to/from work each day it's costing about £1000 per month. Working from home working on a startup I could shave about £250 from that. And my living conditions are much, much better than some of the people I've read about on HN trying to get a startup off the ground in SF living off noodles and sharing a room with several people.
- notahacker 12y ago
  Depends on the lifestyle you're looking to lead. If a rented room in a shared house is adequate for your needs then the annual premium you're paying for that room to be in central London is probably less than the cost of an annual train ticket from outside London, or the lower salary you'd expect in a different city. If you're a young family, on the other hand then you could buy the freehold of a three bed house somewhere like Burnley for little more than the annual rental of a similarly unremarkable small house or flat in a not-especially-fashionable Zone 2 suburb. You'd just then have to cope with living in Burnley :-) The ramen-eating room sharers in SF will probably also be better off than their London counterparts when they get funding (more likely) and can afford to pay themselves salaries linked to a much higher market rate for developers.

fractalsea 12y ago

Compared to the maps of living-area-by-race in the US [1], it seems like there is much less segregation between black and white people in London. I wonder why this is the case? Also, I wonder why there is still heavy segregation in regards to the Asian populations in London. I should add that the apparent mixing between blacks and whites could be because the grey and blue dots look too similar in the London map, but I still think there is more mixing than in the US. [1] http://www.wired.com/2013/08/how-segregated-is-your-city-this-eye-opening-map-shows-you/#slideid-210281 http://www.wired.com/2013/08/how-segregated-is-your-city-thi...

Cuuugi 12y ago
Theres a much heavier contingent of Asian (specifically Indian) immigrants to the UK. People tend to cling to familiarity in foreign lands. As for the Black/White dynamic i have no idea. Source:My Butt
hcho 12y ago
The social housing policies in the UK deliberately tried to tackle social segregation. You would see council blocks 2 streets away in the poshest of the areas. South Asian and Caribbean populations are overrepresented as users of social housing in London as the jobs they were brought in to do don't exist anymore.
- fractalsea 12y ago
  Interesting. That is probably the reason why ex-councel houses are rented out for so much money after they are bought from the council. They are often in very desirable areas. I wonder what the measurable/measured effects of this deliberate integrated housing system have been. I.e. there most have been some objects, and I wonder if they were met.

custardcream 12y ago

Useless page. The mobile version does a poor job of compressing the images resulting in the data labels being unreadable. Bring on SVG for this sort of stuff.