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Yes places change and become world cities. However the problem is the people that made it interesting gave the culture, night-life and art can no longer live th

Yes places change and become world cities. However the problem is the people that made it interesting gave the culture, night-life and art can no longer live there or have a reasonable existance. You kind of at that point end up with really coorporate art and culture as everything has to be high value and you notice the quality really starts to suffer. Also the people who attend these things find they cannot live there either and it all dies.

branchless 11y ago
The difference is the cost of land. If you are in London and given a big deposit from parents to keep your mortgage payments down they you benefit from appreciating asset prices and have disposable income. Life is good (for you). However the cost of appreciating land (in real terms) is that younger people have to pledge more and more of their life to live in the same pile of bricks. It's clearly now reached the point where it's untenable, it's simply a speculative bubble now. All the UK banks are tied up in it, the UK itself is overly reliant on the financial sector, which lends heavily into housing which shows up as "growth" in GDP stats. They will fight hard to prop it up as long as possible. So far we've seen the UK artificially suppressing interest rates and also directly underwriting mortgage risk because even the crazy UK banks won't do it.
swombat 11y ago
Whatever goes up must come down. And it'll probably go back up again some time later. And then come back down. And back up. And so on, until we finally figure out how to genocide ourselves. Until then, what do you want to do? Freeze everything into your ideal version of the world? When London sucks for you, move out. When it doesn't, move in. If London sucks for enough people, they will leave, prices will collapse, and the penniless Sitar players will move in again. At the moment, it's not looking like it's going in that direction, so I'd say we have a good while to go before the Doom of London.
- doc_holliday 11y ago
  Yes, I said something to a similar effect in my other comment. My problem with it is there are a lot of people that get shafted as things change and really get hit hard by it, and the government are to blame for that. Other cities in Europe manage to get a balance between capital investment and tearing the heart out of the city.
amelius 11y ago
Exactly. Also, when it is cheaper to rent in Barcelona and commute to London, you know something is wrong [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6617319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6617319
- ac29 11y ago
  At the time, it was extremely cheap to fly between the two cities (~40USD roundtrip). I just checked the same airline, same airports and the cheapest, midweek flights are about 200USD roundtrip.
- tomp 11y ago
  Only if you're not taking into account the calue of your time.

branchless 11y ago

The difference is the cost of land. If you are in London and given a big deposit from parents to keep your mortgage payments down they you benefit from appreciating asset prices and have disposable income. Life is good (for you). However the cost of appreciating land (in real terms) is that younger people have to pledge more and more of their life to live in the same pile of bricks. It's clearly now reached the point where it's untenable, it's simply a speculative bubble now. All the UK banks are tied up in it, the UK itself is overly reliant on the financial sector, which lends heavily into housing which shows up as "growth" in GDP stats. They will fight hard to prop it up as long as possible. So far we've seen the UK artificially suppressing interest rates and also directly underwriting mortgage risk because even the crazy UK banks won't do it.

swombat 11y ago

Whatever goes up must come down. And it'll probably go back up again some time later. And then come back down. And back up. And so on, until we finally figure out how to genocide ourselves. Until then, what do you want to do? Freeze everything into your ideal version of the world? When London sucks for you, move out. When it doesn't, move in. If London sucks for enough people, they will leave, prices will collapse, and the penniless Sitar players will move in again. At the moment, it's not looking like it's going in that direction, so I'd say we have a good while to go before the Doom of London.

doc_holliday 11y ago
Yes, I said something to a similar effect in my other comment. My problem with it is there are a lot of people that get shafted as things change and really get hit hard by it, and the government are to blame for that. Other cities in Europe manage to get a balance between capital investment and tearing the heart out of the city.

amelius 11y ago

Exactly. Also, when it is cheaper to rent in Barcelona and commute to London, you know something is wrong [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6617319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6617319

ac29 11y ago
At the time, it was extremely cheap to fly between the two cities (~40USD roundtrip). I just checked the same airline, same airports and the cheapest, midweek flights are about 200USD roundtrip.
tomp 11y ago
Only if you're not taking into account the calue of your time.