To think London is in a major decline?

I grew up in London as a child .I moved when my parents grew tired of it in the 70s .Live in Bournemouth now . There are many homeless people . shops have closed .I still visit London and enjoy it. seems rather grubby though!

London is truly awful. I only go LHR or paddington on way to LHR if taking the train.

Having lived all over London and watched parts gentrify over time and some parts stubbornly not, the dividing line is property ownership. The central parts of London are now safety deposit boxes for foreign investors who want standard flats to protect their money.

The outer zones depend on owner occupancy. The more resident owners there the better it is. The noticeable thing in decline is landlords who are exploiting their tenants.

All cities are disgusting and dirty in general a certain way out and a certain way in

I didn't, nor did anyone I know, but the no hopers put up alongside Khan were equally awful.

I love London it's my home town and always will be. I recently moved to Bracknell from Ealing, I was like you feeling overwhelmed by the decline in my area which I can only speak of as I lived there. I've learnt to take the balance of what it is I'm actually missing and what I want. I miss the old Ealing, the community, vibrant, beautiful green Ealing. Over the years I've seen the decline in our high street, the community a lot of places have closed due to no funding and the ever growing sky rise buildings. Though I do understand also that we need to build new homes as our population grows, also the area is what you make it, Bracknell is not Ealing but it's less hectic and seems pleasant enough. I've only been here for less than a month and so far no issues it's very well connected, I have two buses running from outside my home, yes they do come every 30mins but that just means you need to plan your journeys rather than when living in London you could pop out and you knew there was a bus every 5 mins. Then again in London I was always stuck in traffic here in Bracknell there is of course traffic but only in the morning and in rush hour not throughout the day. I do miss Ealing of course it's still early days here but I plan to make the most of Bracknell and explore the area, plus I'm not bound to stay here one good thing I would say about renting is you have flexibility to move around if you don't like an area.

Sorry, I was actually replying to another poster who travels to London regularly, but lives in Somerset.
My arthritic fingers missed the Quote button!

I haven't been to London for quite some time but what you're describing sounds like the area I'm from. Housing has become so expensive and as the older generation have downsized or died their homes have been turned into HMOs or buy to let's. Less homeowners seems to mean less people giving a shit about the area. Everything just looks grubby and uncared for.

I live in a not-posh bit of Zone 4 and was actually thinking on my way to work this morning that my Council is fairly decent:

-newly refurbished swimming pool/gym with friendly staff
-library open 6 days a week, inc after office hours most weeknights
-knackered footpaths currently being resurfaced
-green areas regularly mown (the grass does grow really fast with our wet summers of course)

The main problem is domestic fly-tipping. I used to live 10 minutes up the road in the leafier Tory voting bit (same Council) and it just wasn't an issue there. The Council offers what seems to me to be good rubbish/recycling services, and there is a very efficient tip, but how do you force lazy skanks to use them? Why do so many people think the rest of the world wants to walk past their stained mattress, broken kids toys and obsolete telly?

To end on a positive note, I was on a bus the other day when 3 feral teenage lads slouched on without paying. Then they started smoking. The driver stopped the bus and shouted that they had to get off. He was a short, slight young man and there were 3 of them, but his anger was audible; how dare they violate the holy sanctity of public transport! The 3 scrotes sloped off sulkily muttering. It was brilliant.

As a mum you don’t care for shops and restaurants? I didn’t know when I had a child I had to give up shopping or going to restaurants. How weird.

Khan doesn’t help. Hopefully out at some point, been ages

I think London is the smartest I’ve ever known it! With the new developments at kings Cross, Borough, Battersea etc it’s hugely improved.

but yes still areas of poverty and poor urban planning - but those have always existed. They really shouldn’t and I hope it continues to improve

Well also - and slightly bizarrely - these are the same houses.

I know more than one person who has bought a terrace house in zones 1-3 for £1m+ and found they have a large / extended family living next door that are known as local drug dealers / gangsters, police turning up at all hours etc.

London has always been a real mix of rich and poor, but you now have these weird parallell societies, with half needing £££ for housing while others get long term low cost rentals.

I massively support council housing, but in London there’s a real challenge that housing for the majority is so wildly expensive, having council housing is like winning the lottery. And half the time it’s exactly the same housing.

Its lovely round here - south east London.

I really think litter is a big downer

I very much hope we haven’t lost our road guy as the street looks awful after a few weeks

Plus anyone who leaves dog poo around, horrible

I still get energy from the city and love parts of it, but just past us is really a down area. It just drops quite a bit

I read an article about Nottingham zero carbon school.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/new-net-zero-school-closed-before-admitting-a-single-pupil-because-of-lack-of-children/ar-BB1rnmfv?apiversion=v2&noservercache=1&domshim=1&renderwebcomponents=1&wcseo=1&batchservertelemetry=1&noservertelemetry=1

The school's failure stems from significantly lower demand than anticipated from the nearby 350-home Nottingham Waterside Trent Basin development.

Despite properties in the development costing up to £500,000, most residents are older couples and young professionals without children.

...
The development was expected to provide the majority of pupils for the new school, but the demographic makeup of the residents has made this impossible.

Meanwhile we are in a rare higher birth area in our region with all the schools full which is rare - why housing cheaper than surrounding cities and it's commutable to nearby cities with work in.

I

Except I travel to plenty of countries that are not in the EU and don't see this. And then there are those that are in the EU that have cities with exactly the same issues. It a lazy and misinformed argument to blame the civic decline of UK urban areas on Brexit. Dublin is dangerous and dirty, Marsaille is in a different league to London for violence and filth, Paris, Naples. Frankfurt is seriously dangerous in certain areas. Berlin has no go areas. There are numerous drivers for this but Brexit is way down the line.
And it's continually used as an excuse to not do anything positive or address the issues. We told you so, bla bla bla. Adds nothing to finding solutions, does it.

PS I do believe that Dublin is also very problematic, but I don't know it so am not comparing.

I see Peckham mentioned a lot on here and I think that it's not actually a huge part that has been gentrified. Peckham Rye definitely feels quite edgy at times ;)

I lived and worked in London for 35 years, and then moved to Ireland in 2020. I go back to the UK every few months for work for a few days. I have been struck by the apparent decline everywhere. I was initially away and didn't see the UK for two years because of the pandemic, and London did appear worse to me when I saw it again in 2022, in terms of dirt, homelessness, general run-down-ness.

Since then almost everywhere I have gone in the UK seems to be declining rapidly and I actively dislike going to most places. London still has its attractions, and its my home town and I know it so well, but its still much worse than it was. Birmingham and Sheffield were now horrible. Manchester seemed just about OK (talking about the central areas in all these cities, not suburbs or outer areas). The only place I look forward to going back to is Edinburgh.

I think in London though unless you're in the very residential or more historically affluent areas then it's always been a bit like that.

I lived in Stoke Newington for years and even though it's a really lovely and, now, hugely desirable area of London to live, it's definitely not without it's 'dodgy' areas and ditto the whole of Hackney (not just Hackney BTW). I love the energy, shops and everything else that is there but there is still lots of deprivation that goes hand in hand with the £million houses and gentrification. I can't say I notice it more (except the really loud music being played on buses which drives me mad.) London has always felt like this. My sister lived in Hackney in the Eighties and that felt very scary to me at the time, but she loved it, probably for all the reasons I found it to be terrifying.

My dad lives just in a village outside a town in Somerset and .whenever I go there it feels really rundown and I hate walking around there at night. My dad would never go out there at night anymore, but the village he lives in 20 mins down the road he feels safe as houses. I think it goes to show it's not limited to London (or other big cities).