population growth in London

[walchesterweasel]

I just watched a programme about the new £5 billion sewer in London , yup, I know how to have a good time . It said the population of London increases by 100,000 every year. How is this possible? Where do all these people go? Do the boundaries expand or do more people live in the same amount of housing? AIBU in not understanding how this is possible?

It becomes more and more overcrowded. Every possible area being built upon. It always strikes me how busy London now is when I have to use Victoria Station during rush hour. Compared to 10-20 years ago it is now staggeringly busy, a crush of people that feels dangerous.

In the area that I live in every possible space has been used to build flats. Schools locally have gone from one to two and sometimes three form entry.

Everyone I know in london is building an extension on their house rather than moving

Astonishing and very very worrying, isn't it.

The whole country has become London centric. What dismays me about this is that the best of almost everything the country has to offer ends up in London.

For example, the best chefs are not in Bristol, they're in London.
The best doctors are not to be found in Chester-le-Street but Harvey Street.
The best actors are not plying their trade in Southend, they're in the West End.

In so many professions the centre of gravity is London and you can only go so far in the provinces if you want to get to the top.
And every single time that great lawyer, chef, artist, author, economist or whatever goes to London they diminish in some small way the place they have left behind.

This is what makes London so wonderful, one of the few world cities, a place where foreigners are treated on an equal basis with the locals.
Until Brexit (provincialism writ large) destroys everything of course.

They're building on every available green space including back gardens, we are currently battling to save part of a park

They're demolishing smaller buildings eg pubs and building high rises there

We hope to be out of London soon. It's horrendous. Twenty years ago, I thought it would reach a tipping point....

None of it is affordable and much of it remains empty for investors to use in lieu of gold.

We have a massive overpopulation problem worldwide but we also have a problem in London and it's being encouraged. The thing that puzzles me is why people still want to come, presumably it's about work? If not for elderly parents we could have left by now.

Its not "provincial" (this to the sneering Ethyl) to want to have somewhere to live thats not a tiny box (flat) over a mega sewer. Where rents are astronomical (they've always been high) and in some places English is a rarity. I left London my beautiful home city, no other choice.

What was the programme called, OP?

LoveInTokyo - It was called The Five Billion Pound Super Sewer BBC2
If they need new infrastructure to take so much more waste way , the demand for fresh water must be increasing at the same rate , where's that coming from?

I just find it mind boggling that year upon year an extra 100,000 people can fit in the same space.

We are zone 5. There is a notorious estate near where I grew up, already overpopulated, poorly maintained etc. They have just built another layer of flats on top of a block of flats. It’s ludicrous.

@IamPickleRick

oh yes, there's quite a bit of that going on round here as well. It's truly horrendous and it's never recognised as an overpopulation problem.

all the transport development is just filtering people into London as well.

I don’t really understand how they’ve done it because surely the foundations only support 2 layers of flats, not three? The local paper was applauding them for building new council houses. The estate already looks like a bin.

@IamPickleRick

yes my mum asked me that as well. I am quite actively involved in the local area and my understanding is that a lot of places that were built as three or four storeys actually can support another two.

in some cases, freeholders didn't appear to own the rights to the space above their property which confused the heck out of me.

town planning happens decades in advance so I think some of these buildings were always built with the potential to build higher up.

everywhere in London looks like a bin now, it's so depressing. Also, sorry to go off piste a bit - but I wish we could have some regulations about how things look. Garish yellow and red shop fronts add to the depressing nature of it all.

the latest building battle we had - ongoing - involves building flats where there are some office and the office holders weren't told about the alleged consultation.

I live in east London and the skyline is full of cranes for high rises that are popping up all the time. 2 streets of houses have been knocked down not far from me to make way for more blocks and there is a consultation going on to knock down a retail park for more housing.
The dlr, tubes and buses are beyond overcrowded, no idea how more people are meant to get to work.

Its not just London. Most cities in the U.K. are going the same way

I grew up in Edinburgh and had to leave.

I’m not sure which is more mind boggling, a billion pound pipe to transport excrement or 100,000 increase year on year! I’ll stick with the countryside thank you very much.

I'm zone 5 - in my borough they ae putting 30,000 new properties (so for that you can read 75,000 new people) on reclaimed marsh land and brown fill sites …. no infrastructure, no hospital no GP surgery, no Schools to accommodate them

If the official figures say that an extra 100k people move to London every year, it’s a safe bet that at least the same number of illegals arrive unregistered and uncounted.

i guess London will end up like NY. We are in the leafy suburbs of outer zone 6 and everyone here is uo in arms because they keep buying up detached family houses on streets of detached houses and puting 2 or 3 storey blocka of 8 - 16 flats in the same space (though of course no extra parking or road space for the extra 30/40 cars). Whole street objecta but to no avail as its part of the "local plan" and the council have extremely aggressive new housing targets so have to cram in as much as possible wherever they can.

Large single family homes are becoming vanishingly rare. We will all be living in flats soon. Not unusual for big cities. We will go the way of New York and Hong Kong.

£5 billion for a sewer eh? That’s some expensive shit

We have moved back to a cul de sac off the road we lived in 20 years ago. We lost two cats on this road years ago it was a rat run, now there are so many cars parked on both sides it is impossible to do over 20 odd miles an hour. Perhaps everywhere is much busier with more properties/people/vehicles than previously.

reeldrop "i guess London will end up like NY"

I worked there for a bit but it was several years ago. They seemed to have the infrastructure but I don't know what it's like now.

going the way of Hong Kong is pretty terrifying too.

Also - I'm guessing there are studies - it feels like everyone is going everywhere all the time. I'm not one of those people, but I know a lot of people who think nothing of travelling across London to pack in tons of activity each weekend. It's kind of like Build a Bear syndrome - people think nothing of travelling ages because, rooftop bar, or street food or some such....it doesn't seem automatic to think "what's the nearest nice place to meet".

sorry, that's not about overpopulation, but it does strike me in terms of crowding on Tubes and if there's no time to do engineering work etc because of night Tubes it all gets more disruptive.

the other thing that bugs me - dons hard hat - is the amount of road space that's been lost for pedestrianised space which really just means more places to hang around and eat and drink. Entire bus lanes have gone with some of these places.

I hear there's a local 2 lane traffic thing that will be changed to one lane for shared space pedestrians and cycles - now just local buses will take forever. the irony is they want to discourage car use here in zone 5 but if anything it will encourage it if we can't get the bus!

NewYearNewMe18 you night be near me, is that the island?