To wonder how people cope living in London?!

[WinterIsHereJon]

I'm visiting for the weekend. It's hot, sweaty, incredibly busy. We had the misfortune of travelling on the tube during rush hour earlier, people pushed and pushed onto an already full train, to the point where I became rather intimately acquainted with a chap behind me. Despite the complete lack of room people were still attempting to read newspapers! I think I'd snap if that was part of my daily routine, I don't know how people do it!

NicknameUsed
I love the countryside Lake District and Norfolk broads are two of my favourite places!
Also love Lisbon Barcelona etc, but as someone of colour who was born in small town and whose mum also born here gets tiresome explaining where "you're from" My twins keep asking if we're famous when we travel to certain parts of the country as people stare and ask where were from😐.
Whereas my sibling loves being the "only black person in the village"!
Guess we're all different plus London is so vibrant!
Just returned from a big park in the city where there was a spontaneous gathering of people belly dancing playing drums and juggling which was pretty cool!😊😊

I couldn't do it and wouldn't want to, especially with kids. Not my idea of fun!

I live in a grey suburb and still love London. And there's plenty of crime outside London too. It's not even the gun crime capital of the U.K. (Nottingham has that honour).

it's full of parks and gardens, you can hardly go anywhere without falling over green open space

According to Google, London has 35k acres of greenspace...for the roughly 9 million people that live there.

That is a tiny, tiny amount of green space for the overall size and population.

I don't mind giving London credit for the things it's great for...the diversity, the museums, the restaurants and so on.

But I do have to roll my eyes at the pictures posted of rivers and postage stamp gardens or greens, surrounded by massive buildings. London doesn't have to 'win' at everything... and green space is not something that London excels at compared to the rest of the UK!

Greenest city in Europe. Yup, not surrounded by national parks but you go to a national park for that.

Jassy l was just thinking that on Friday when l went into the City and and everyone kept offering help with my pram. Most Londoner's know access is shit and just help out without really thinking about it.

Cath, I know! I've never had an issue with the kids in central London and I take them a fair bit. (We are now in suburbia after many years in various bits of Zone 2.) People are thoughtful and they don't make a song and dance about it.

General sense of solidarity, might be the best way to describe it.

Greenest city in Europe...um, no, it's not. A quick google will confirm it for you.

40% of London is accessible green space compared to, say 14%, of Berlin. It has the most green space of any European city and third of any city in the world.

Hence the not entirely serious campaign to designate London a national park in its own right.

According to google, Sheffield is the UK City that has the most green space...

Well, City of London Corporation 2013 report was my source. Can't answer for Google.

And going off figures, Sheffield has over 40k acres of greenspace owing to the fact it's borders include a National Park...

40k acres of greenspace in Sheffield, with a population of 600k or
35k acres of greenspace in London, with a population of 9m...

Anyway...back to the benefits of London.

I'm reading all this and thinking of my friend who is currently working 7 days a week (2 of those are 11am-4pm, her 'days less'), in order to live in a shared house. And has been doing similar for years, and years. If you are trying to get by on a minimum wage, London is the worst. She was in a different shared flat last year; the landlady decided to raise the rent by £100 per month to around £750 (nearly twice my mortgage!) - and then when she moved out because she couldn't afford it, the landlady didn't give her back her full deposit. Luckily she has friends who were able to take her in. Unless you already own a house there, or have a decent (DECENT) wage, London is not great...

NumptyMum
London is definitely expensive, reason being people want to live in one of the most vibrant and multicultural cities in the world!
I love NY and spent lots of time there in my twenties but people from different races mostly work together but don't really socialise and have really good friends across racial divide...

The Sheffield comparison is a bit disingenuous because the official city boundary was redrawn to include a big chunk of the national park and plenty of towns and villages where people wouldn't consider themselves city dwellers. It just happens that their villages fall within the city limits for admin purposes.

The actual city centre bit where people live and work isn't particularly green.
If London arbitrarily redrew the city boundry to include the South Downs, it might make the average green space per head of population look better on paper, but it wouldn't give anyone any more space to eat their lunch outside, or go for a run before work
When people say London is green, they mean there are parks and commons all over the city. No matter where you live, you don't have to go far to find open space.
The same isn't true for many other cities, where they might have a handful of parks but nothing in between

I guess the multiculturalism is a big draw: it's funny though, when my friend first moved there - as someone who is by heritage, hong kong chinese - everyone was surprised to hear her Scottish accent because they thought she'd have an English accent!

I love London. Lived in Bayswater years back. Right on the high street. It was crazy loud and the fumes would just cover you. But really enjoyed my time there. In the evenings I used to just sit on my balcony with my drink and people watch. Oh I miss it.

yes River exactly, it's important to mention this side of London for this thread to be balanced! indeed the people in these areas are not likely to report on Mn!
limited it's not about apologising, it's just useful; to recognise that the best areas of London are a nice bubble so helps a to specify where you live for those posters who sing praises uncritically! I had lived in an equally nice area before, and am fond of Kensington Gardens and Holland Park, but I've seen it all by getting around a lot. As I say you have to accept the grit on the other side if you claim to love London rather than 'kensignton and chelsea' or 'hampstead' which are bubbles (well not so much North Ken, ha).
Queen haha you actually do, I believe it more that you love the city, to be happy with that compromise!

sparechange people on the edge of the city I.e the peak area do consider themselves to live in Sheffield but at the edge of Sheffield.

Lots of areas of work which are not in the city centre either. You may work in a large factory, yet see lambs in the fields opposite.

Retail isn't in the city centre either.

I don't pick London out and say I'm not keen because it's London, but rather I'm not really keen on living in the middle of a city.

"The misfortune of travelling on the tube during rush hour" is as nothing compared with the misfortune of hoping that the one bus an hour to my nearest city (a mere 13 miles away), to which many people have to commute , actually turns up. The last direct bus home leaves at 1720h, so journeys after that time not only involve standing most of the way, but hanging around at dismal bus stations waiting for connections. Add to that the fact that the direct bus takes 1 hour and 20 minutes (for 13 miles, remember!). Ten years ago there were at least 8 buses an hour on the route. The nearest station, only recently reopened, is 3 miles away, the trains from there are also one per hour, the roads are totally congested. I live in a small town up North on a very busy main road, not out in the sticks.

I love where I live, especially now I'm retired and don't have to worry about getting to work on time. Whenever we go to London (which I love), I am amazed at the ease with which we can get around. Obviously this is more difficult in rush hour, but few of us have it easy.

I'm visiting for the weekend. It's hot, sweaty, incredibly busy

Not

a) in the winter
b) during the holidays

There are compelling reasons not to live in London (mainly noise, and the expense of travel and accommodation), but overcrowding and heat are things you can, with planning, generally avoid.

I'm so sick of these threads slagging off London. If you don't like it, don't fucking come here, nobody's forcing you to. I've lived in London for 20+ years! In the West End, Victoria and now Bloomsbury and they've all had their good points and bad points, though I'm lucky that I can usually avoid using the tube but as a others have said I'd rather have our over crowded transport system than live somewhere where there is one bus an hour if that. And my eldest is about to start secondary school that has a world class rating and is walking distance from home.

And someone said they thought Londoners were unfriendly; nonsense. A friend and I took our dogs for a walk around Regents Park this morning and we chatted to loads of people. Also when I was on a bus later a man was helping a tourist to get off at the right stop.

And not everything has to be expensive, I'm going to the theatre a few times this month as its 'kids go free' for the whole of August for many shows, as well as all the other free stuff that's already been mentioned.

Somedaybaby, Sheffield was where I went to uni, and I agree, loads of green space. But I chose to move to London.

Now DD is cosnidering Sheffield Uni and I am wondering whether it might be somewhere we might retire to....

I've lived in some very grotty areas - a falling down bedsit in Cricklewood next to the old Food Giant, a flat on the A23, and bought an ex-council flat on a concrete estate in West London which overlooked a park - the people in nice blocks on the other side had to look at my eyesore but inside it was lovely, so I figure I had the better deal there. Now live in a very mixed area, where every street has lovely gentrified houses with a few that are bedsits, etc.

The thing with London is that even if you live in the most crime-ridden ugly estate going, you're only five minutes walk from a nicer area and 10 minutes from a hidden treasure. I often wondered why people paid a million for a flat by the river that was swamped with people all round on a sunny weekend, when I could walk there in 5 minutes from said concrete estate and then have a peaceful evening at home minus a thousand drinkers on my doorstep!
Other UK cities aren't quite so mixed up, though most are better than cities in say America where there are much larger undiverse respectable or crime-ridden areas.