Why do people live in London?

[Waahaawoowoo]

This thread is inspired by a thread where people where explaining how a £100k salary doesn't go far in London. Examples were given of mortgages costing £25k pa. (This is my salary). Childcare bills for 2 kids costing £40k. Our joint salary is £55k pa.

I live in NE Wales. Our house costs us £12k pa for a 3 bedroom semi. Wraparound Childcare used to cost a maximum of £12k pa. But we no longer pay due to age of kids and me WFH. I cannot get my head around DH and I being significantly better off than a couple who earn double what we do.

The logical answer to me would be to move from London. So why do people stay? Is it family? The type of work you do? I'm curious more than anything about what keeps people there when they could possibly have a better standard of living elsewhere.

I'm not from London and I have lived in many countries around the world but London is where we (husband is not from London either) decided to buy a house and live. We have a nature reserve in front of us, the Thames 4 minutes walk away, a tow path that takes us wherever we want to go without using roads. We have 2 royal parks within 30 minutes walk from us. We have peace and quiet and lots of nature but can be in the centre of London, from our door, within 40 minutes by tube. Every part of London is a distinct area/old village. It's fascinating.

Londoner here. I lived temporarily in a lovely city, elsewhere in the uk, for about a month on a job contract. Second month, I really missed London. I particularly missed central London (where I lived at that time) and yeah, I did actually do “cultural” things several times a week (pp questioned how much people actually “do”).

As a base line, in the lovely not-London city, I remember thinking that there was say one <eg Baltic> restaurant. Whereas, in London, there are tens of them. It’s the absolute adventure. Tired of London, tired of life stuff.

Also, the people! My friends include everyday people, but also tv and radio presenters, authors, musicians, artists, people doing really interesting stuff (I grew up in a northern industrial city and yes, I did know such people, but not nearly at the scale I do now). Basically, there are so many opportunities here.

I lived in London for decades. Loved it. Have moved away and I love where I live now. There is diversity here, but nothing on the scale of London.

But.

I have encountered some racist attitudes and it is troubling. I am white and some other white people seem unashamed to share their racism with me. Mostly people my age and older, younger people seem far less bigoted.

Why do people live anywhere? They’re born there, grow up there, move there for work, chose to settle there. My ancestors moved from Scotland, Wales and northern England to London 300 years ago. They were cleared from the slums after WWI and moved to south west London and stayed here during the blitz. Two of my siblings have moved away but the rest of us are still here. It’s expensive, there’s a massive shortage of housing as more people move here everyday. I love it though, my family and my history are here, friends, work, we’re on the edge so have lots of green space and the river and can be in central London in 30mins on the train.

I miss it. Take me back to London.

The buzz, the variety, the options.
Nowhere quite like it.

@Needmorelego yep

Doesn’t actually answer the question, but nonetheless have more respect for other people’s experiences.

I miss it too. But we have a better quality of life where we are now.

I must have better neighbours than you. This doesn't happen in our cul de sac.

I think what is becoming obvious on this thread is that people who like being busy and going out a lot love London.

However, DH is a home bird and isn't interested in visiting museums and art galleries, hates going to gigs and loathes crowds and noise. I, on the other hand like doing these things, but only occasionally, so I am off to a gig tonight and out with friends for Tapas tomorrow night.

DH isn't interested in coming so he is staying in on his own, and will just watch the rugby instead.

Oh, and he hates London. He even finds Newcastle claustrophic to stay in.

Oh and my dh is from overseas, there’s racism here but no where near as much as when we go to other parts of the UK. Happier here where my kids can mix with people from all backgrounds and treat everyone the same.

That's just it. I bet there are as many all-white echo chambers in every 'diverse' area outside of London where they get bigoted opinions off their chest about people to whom they are as nice as pie for the rest of the time. It is often the little things. My friend (originally from Barbados) was in Milton Keynes last week and two teenage girls noticed her and were whispering and glancing at her throughout the journey. It was obviously about race even though they never even spoke to her. It is a sort of racism you can no longer pin down because you could so easily be told that 'teenagers are like that'. If you experience it permanently then it can make you truly miserable. To not have to deal with that is effectively like a deadweight lifted off your chest.

Purely for work. Loved it for many, many years after moving here as a 16 year old, but now as a 56 year old, not so much. Hope to move out when I retire, to somewhere pretty and quiet 😆

So much in London is free like the museums and art galleries or pretty cheap. You can get cheap theatre tickets easily for instance.

When we go back to London we eat at a veggie indian restaurant in Covent Garden. Where we live now in The Midlands it is dearer to eat in an Indian restaurant than it is there and the choice for vegetarians is very limited.

You do get racism all over the planet, even in my majority non white London borough the Indians are not always that kind about the Pakistanis or blacks never mind people from another caste so just because an area is mostly not white does not mean it has no racists. I am from Northumberland which is about 98% white and I never found it particularly racist up there at all. In fact the more space you have to live and the less crowded people are the easier it is to tolerant other people are everyone has loads of space.

@Needmorelego ...i go to something at least twice a week i would say..but i do not have young children so maybe that is the difference.
this week i went to a fabulous talk at lunch time at Duant books in marylebone, drinks at wine bar that specialises in italian wine ony, and i had coffee at the BFI on southbank and watched them setting up for an premiere of something...
I also walked up portobello rd ( near where i live) and soaked in a very multicultural market enviroment.
next week i am going to a theatre above a pub and a gallery ...

May I ask your race?

It’s the absolute adventure. Tired of London, tired of life stuff.

We've moved around a fair bit of the UK and lived in several cities and first few years are always exciting seeing all the sights finding new areas and things to see. I think after a while anywhere can pale - though I grant you with London history and cultural diversity I could see it taking much longer.

However many people move out often at different life stages and find things they love - many of our ex Londoner friends actually moved to other countries.

I can't be the only one wonder at what point it just becomes unaffordable for too many to live and work there but then I've seen estate agents on YouTube showing tiniest little apartments in New York costing an obscene amount and think maybe there is no limit.

I live in both, London and my village. It’s from the sublime to the ridiculous sometimes. Some of my neighbours (the farmers!) are great and very supportive, it’s the folk that like the country view but don’t fully understand the land that are the boundary-crossers.

Why do people live in NE Wales?

What an odd post.

So much in London is free like the museums and art galleries or pretty cheap. You can get cheap theatre tickets easily for instance.

You can see Simon Rattle conduct the London Symphony Orchestra for £10 (wildcard policy) + £3.50 public transport to get there and back.

DONT LIKE LONDONERS ME😜

I suspect this was started as a typically goady thread, but for those genuinely interested in the question:

Career opportunities. Not just the number of jobs available, but the size of the companies - there are opportunities to grow and develop. I’ve been promoted in my last three companies. It never happened to me before I moved here, simply because there was nowhere to move up to in any of those companies.

So much to do. I never have to go to the same pub or restaurant, or event or attraction, twice if I don’t want to - which actually makes me appreciate my favourites more, as I’m going back out of choice rather than necessity. I see people boasting about the “lovely friendly village” they live in and how it has a great local pub and a Chinese and an Indian… all I can think of is how no matter how good they are, they must get pretty damn samey after a few visits.

So easy to get around. I tried for a year to learn to drive and hated every second - never again. Even pre-London, I lived in big cities, so it was never a problem, but I found that attitudes to it were. I had a job interview years ago where the first thing they asked about was the fact that I didn’t drive, even though it was utterly irrelevant to the job. Bizarre! (I got said job and somehow managed for two years car-free…) But London is so different. It’s set up for non-drivers. Rather than having to prove I can manage, it’s expected. If I want a late night out, I don’t have to choose driving and no drinks or an expensive cab home - I can get night buses, or the 24-hour Tube on some lines.

It’s so easy to get anywhere else I want to go too. For the poster who rather sneerily said “There are such things as hotels and trains for the twice-yearly theatre trip” - you do realise trains go out of London as well as into it? Even without considering that half an hour in each direction can mean a totally different experience without even leaving London, I can be on the Kent or Sussex coast or the Surrey countryside/woodlands with an hour to 90 minutes, the Cotswolds within two hours… in two to two and a half hours, I can be in Brussels or Paris without having to trek to the airport! Where else can you get to easily from North Wales?

On a more personal level:

I don’t have or want children. An extra bedroom or two is space I don’t really need - so why would I move to another city or town to get it, giving up everything I want in terms of lifestyle in the process? Yes, I could have more space for my money elsewhere, but I’d have to offset that against the drop in my earning potential. Also, I might be able to get a property of a similar standard to my current one for £100 - 200k less elsewhere, but it means I have a much less valuable asset when I’ve finished paying the mortgage too. If I wanted to, I could retire to a smaller city, buy a similar property and have a significant lump sum towards my retirement into the bargain.

I like the anonymity of living in London. When a poster said earlier “I lived in London and hated it, I didn’t know any of my neighbours!”, my first thought was “Great!” It’s not that I actively don’t want to know them, but I don’t see any great value in a friendship based solely on a shared postcode. When I see threads on here along the lines of “I’ve seen THREE strange cars on my road this week, what do I dooooo?!” or “My neighbour never opens her curtains before 11am, whyyyyy?!”, I thank my lucky stars that I don’t live somewhere where everyone knows one another’s business - or, if they don’t, are desperate to know.

I do love other parts of the UK too! I don’t go in for the idea that there’s no life outside of London any more than most sensible people believe London is just some expensive, smog-filled concrete jungle. But I know where I want to live and I’m very happy.

It's lovely, and exciting.

Questions like this confuse me. I think the countryside is boring as anything and love London. But I get that loads of people like it. It's just preference isn't it. It's like asking "why would anyone have cropped hair?" I dunno? People are different. No one is right.

Living in London means I can go to that weird or interesting sounding play/exhibition/event because if it's terrible I've waste £5-20. If I had to pay for a train to a major city and potentially accommodation, I probably wouldn't risk it. I'd have missed out on a lot of great things (and a few rubbish ones 😂)