To think London is in a major decline?

[Phannyphart]

I’ve lived in London (zone 2) for 10+ years. It’s always been pretty ‘real’ here but since the end of covid really everywhere just seems so, so awful.
Dog shit everywhere, spit everywhere, council owned parks closed and locked, people littering more than ever before. Get on a bus and it’s just people screaming in to a FaceTime on top volume, people blasting TikTok. Kids being stabbed in broad daylight, people shooting up heroin near the nearby primary school. The area has a lot going for it but it really seems wherever I go there is an awful decline.
Has anybody feeling the same actually moved out? Do you regret it?

Last time I was walking down the Strand I noticed far far more homeless people than I did a few years ago when I used to work there every day.

I've worked round there 20 years and lived there 15 years ago, its been full of rough sleepers the whole time. It used to be way more run down in the 5 years after the financial crisis.

@shakespearetower I'd go there because it's a beautiful building and a good central place for business meetings with decent restaurants. I think you're being a little disingenuous. Look at the Bloomberg building and arcade and how lively that whole area is. Used to be a ghost town after 6pm. London Bridge and Borough Market also bustling all hours. A city needs people to have life in it. Square Mile was a shadow before after hours. Also look at King's Cross. Junkies on our doorstep back in the day. Nuf said.

There were many in the Strand during the 1980s and 90s, and after that but I particularly noticed them at that time because I walked up the Strand every day then. They were in shop doorways, had slept there all night with their few belongings and old blankets. There was also 'cardboard city'. During that time many drop in centres and shelters opened.

Am not being disingenuous, and I'm not disagreeing with you @NutsForMutts , the Square Mile isn't what it used to be. And yes, places like Bloomberg are bustling now, but at the weekend, deserted, Mondays too. Even Friday nights are hit and miss. (It's also dead most nights by 9pm too). The City as a whole is busier Tuesday to Thursday then drops out at the weekend. Agree re. Borough Market but again, like a ghost town on Monday. London Bridge, not really a destination and again, convenient due to its location and the fact it's a major artery station for London.

The Ned serves a purpose mostly for business meetings and for those who are a bit to old for Shoreditch. Yes, the building is beautiful. However, I don't think the restaurants are good, there's much better elsewhere. But, and like I said, it's a convenient location.

I live in the Square Mile and for a time, worked in it as well. Have been here in one way or anything for 20 odd years, so my experiences are going to be different to yours, more so as a resident.

Actually I think the complete opposite. In the past we just had to put up with it. I think TFL adverts might be the only ones to actually tell men to stop doing awful things.

You are happy there is sexual harassment on the tube because the posters are telling men not to?

I agree, there was always plenty of sexual harassment on trains and tube years ago, you just had to deal with it at the time, not always easy when crowded.

Those tube posters are because of an anti VAWG campaign. It shouldn’t be necessary to tell people this stuff isn’t acceptable but it’s part of a zero tolerance policy and it’s progress not something to be anxious about.

London’s history is full of peaks and troughs. I don’t think this will be one of its finest periods, mainly because of the exodus of families. There’s something a bit sci fi about running out of children. The 1970s saw a population decrease too. London will rise again.

Time Out just ranked London fifth in world cities.

New York feels so different from what it used to feel like and in a bad way. Spent a lot of time there between 2007 and 2014 but have only been back twice since then — 2016 and 2022. The last visit in 2022 it really felt like New York was on the decline — everything smelled of cannabis, piss and rubbish, lots of empty shop fronts and office spaces (especially in midtown). Still brilliant energy and of course lots of wealth but it felt much worse than the city I first got to know.

I have only lived in London since 2014 so my knowledge is on a shorter time scale but the City at least seems to have improved in that time (at least in pockets) but there seems to be a shift eastward even within the city of London. Used to work on Fleet Street and that area looks so sad and depressed now but the areas around Spitalfields, Royal exchange and Bloomberg Arcade have all kind of come up in just the time I have worked in the city. Admittedly I don’t have much sense of what it is like on the weekend.

This! Grew up in central London in the 90s - open drug use, no-go areas, litter and dog mess on the pavement were a regular occurrence.

I’ve lived here for 25 years and am wondering if I will eventually leave. The cost of housing is insane, crime is high, transport is 2k for an annual travel card. There are many things I love about it but with Brexit and Covid it has at least for now lost some magic for me. Would have to go to another city though I think

Exactly the same in our city - here they don’t even bother with the Uber eats cover!
young men on electric bikes or scooters all in black cover their faces too.
they use the bus lanes to get places quicker

The whole county is in decline!

we have homeless in tents around the city, gangs of homeless off their faces in the city centre.

litter everywhere, bird and dog shit everywhere.

the nice areas are still nice though

Nope. Lived in London for 32 years and still find it lovely. At least in my neck of the woods (Hampstead).

Lived here all my life.
It's very area dependent OP.
Move to another part?

@catcafeatno10

Your last paragraph made me chuckle. I would love to see this . I've seen people go to my local shop in slippers , pjs and onesies , but with coats thrown over the top . In the 1960s and 70s I remember women going to work in factories on a Friday with curlers in their hair and a headscarf on top to get ready for Friday night. Most factories finished at midday on a Friday . Never saw people shopping in town with their curlers in .

When you look at vintage photographs of shoppers it always strikes me how smart people looked . Everyone smartened up to go shopping in town .

Born and bred in London, left 20 years ago to another large city in England.
I think every large city in England is struggling with the same issues.
Huge year on year reduction in LA funding over more than a decade means:
Street cleaners are few and far between, rubbish and poo is cleaned less regularly, so is more visible.
Services to support homeless people and those with addictions have been massively reduced, so we see more people on the streets.
Police budgets massively reduced affecting the bits of the service that would work with kids and adults at risk of offending. So, for example, knife crime is on the rise.
Social services budgets massively reduced so those that would support families at risk not able to support as many people.
Parks budgets massively reduced so reductions in opening times, closure of park loos, reduced number of people to monitor and maintain them.
The list goes on.
Add the impact on the economy of Brexit, then COVID, then the invasion of Ukraine...
It's ok don't worry, the huge and predictable impacts of climate change will start to hit harder very soon, and then in 10 years time we'll all be saying, 'remember when we had parks?'.

I think people too often have rose tinted glasses concerning the past.
I moved to London back in the late 90s after graduating and have been here 25 years.
When I first moved here there were whole areas that were unsafe to be in. Over the years the city has grown safer, cleaner and much more pleasant to live in.
I honestly can't think of a single area these days I'd feel particularly unsafe in.
It's not perfect, but the London described by the OP is nothing like the one I see every day.
Back in the early 2000s I lived in Stratford and Leyton, spent a lot of my free time in and around Brixton and Peckham. These days those places are paradise relative to the way they were then!

Back in the early 2000s I lived in Stratford and Leyton, spent a lot of my free time in and around Brixton and Peckham. These days those places are paradise relative to the way they were then!

Brixton was absolutely fine in the 00s, much more vibrant but yes less white mc people. Some of these comments make me uncomfortable…

Lol I don't even live in London and know Hampstead is a very posh bit. You may feel differently if you lived in Poplar

It's the pattern of wealth that has changed. A lot of the centre has changed. Hackney's murder mile no longer exists. The crack houses of Brixton are now multi millions. Bethnal Green isn't full of gangs fighting each other over skin colour, and the street drinkers in Hammersmith have been mopped up and moved on. Elephant is now private towers, not public ones. Even the Walworth Road is starting to gentrify.

Whereas the suburbs are static or declining; they look really really scruffy to me. Look at Croydon 30 years ago compared to now. Horrible.

The other change is numbers. Another 3 million people. This does make much tougher to live in.

The number of people is the crux of it millions more living in London in the last 2 decades....I think 3 million is an understatement.

The facts are there the latest ONS report show that we had over a million in net migration in the UK in just 1 year that is totally staggering...

I live in a northern city in UK but have visited London numerous times over the last 50 years. The north/south differences were always apparent. Lovely clean streets, parks, museums, galleries, interesting shops in London all evidence in my opinion of investment which clearly wasn’t heading up north. I’ve always enjoyed visiting friends, sightseeing, shopping and generally having a great time. However the city felt so different when I visited the weekend before Christmas. I couldn’t believe how dirty the city was, full of rubbish. For the first time I felt really on guard of my own personal safety and possessions. I have never seen coffee shops with doormen for security and at restaurants to at 6pm! At Jigsaw by Charing Cross the poor staff were unlocking the front door to let customers in and locking it behind them. Very different feel in my opinion. I seriously worry about the future of my beloved country.

Interestingly supermarkets are actually the business's with the real population data... there the ones that can work out how many people are being catered for food wise in any area. ONS data are official figures and conservative.

@flutterby1 yep supermarkets are putting the numbers way higher than what is being reported by ONS....it is very, very worrying.

No wonder London needed a new super sewer🤔

I agree. I lived in the heart of Brixton when I moved back to London after university in the late 90s and still live very close. Definitely more going on and not less safe than it is now.