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?

I think many other areas have similar issues OP, councils with far less money to spend on peripherals , lots of people with bugger all standards too-a lot of this is on the general public- not just local authorities or government -

London I think is very specific, some areas look way better, others look awful and have a bad vibe - This is what happens when only those with social housing or are wealthy live there with a lot of house sharing in the mix too -families and couples at that middle level move away and it creates an unbalanced demographic- the areas that have still retained lots of families and have good facilities on the whole to me are still good ( and hence expensive) - other city's that are expensive have similar issues, Bristol being one , but because of London's size it's way more noticeable

I think London has become more gentrified over the years. It’s always been edgy but some of the edges have been gently shaven over the years to a point where it almost had a Disney vibe or movie version it was so manicured in some parts of West London.

I am however horrified by the decline of Paris and Rome. We won’t be travelling back to Paris with the kids.

And huge numbers of empty flats bought by foreign investors to launder money aren't helping contribute to the community feel either.

Thanks for mentioning the City of London. That is what I initially thought this thread was about when I read the title.

It is not only the rubbish in the streets but where is the UK generally headed if the taxes generated by the City are no longer there for the milking.

I'm not an UK citizen or ever lived in the UK.

I went to London in 92 for the first time and fell in love. It was a vibrant, incredible full on city, with people from all over the world with a fab vibe. It was clean and gorgeous and for me, the best city in Europe by miles.

I travelled another 3 times in the late 90s and a couple of times in the early 2000s and loved it even more. I have a nephew and niece (South African but with a Spanish passport) living in London, 20 minutes in the tube from the CBD) and their suburb was clean and full of life.

I didn't go back to London until 2019, just before COVID hit, and I was shocked at the decline. The vibe was different. It was not as clean or vibrant. Train stations looked old and in need of renovations. Road streets had holes and needed serious maintenance work and buildings needed painting. Even shopping for something that in Australia/Spain is easy - buying green fresh prawns, took me half a day because fishmongers and supermarkets didn't have them. Fresh vegetables in the supermarket looked awful ........ honestly, I didn't expect the decline in a city I'd love so much.

I'm going to Spain this year and will see my nephew and niece families there. I won't go back to London.

HMO are the new licensed slum houses. They should be banned.

I don't think its that bad!

Council services in the more residential areas are becoming more threadbare (countrywide) , people' behaviour is less considerate in all sorts of ways (countrywide), high street shops are being replaced by all sorts of 'services' (nail bars, mini-golf, charity shops etc) (countrywide)..But actually I think the visitor ££ is keeping LOndon going pretty well.

Restaurants are booming and you have to book, (though many are also struggling), theatre tickets hard to get, people still help anyone with a pushchair or heavy luggage on steps in tube stations .

The return to the office will presumably keep life in the sandwich bars and pubs from closing further.

Newly developed areas seem to be attracting shoppers, visitors etc (Kings Cross, Battersea Power Station)

In my residential area schools continue to improve, housing is being bought and sold...

My friends largely live in SE London, which was a comparative dump when we lived there 20 years ago, and now seems all very chi-chi when we visit (don't only go to tourist parts!). Also my office areas are more upmarket than they were when I worked there.

We moved to Bristol (ish)

It started 2 or 3 decades ago, firstly in the regions such as the run down ex-mill towns, ex-mining towns, ex-industrial and ex-seaside towns. Of course the London centric politicians and Londoners didn't care as it didn't affect London (same with other big cities). Now that it's starting to expand into the big cities, people are suddenly waking up and seeing the impact and finally complaining about it. Only about 20 years too late!

i meant to add these links to my post

www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly559jnd2zo.amp

www.hackneycitizen.co.uk/2024/10/04/parents-teachers-furious-council-primary-school-closures/

Was pressing and sexualised leering ever acceptable?

I’ll say it’s the explosion of sexual harassment on public transport that has brought the need to address it.

because nobody can afford to have kids, or more accurately afford a house big enough to put them in london.

They're all in tents round the back of the Adelphi

and think of Gaza too!

by that logic no one should be complaining about anything so MNs shouldn’t even exist 🙄

To live in London, you have to have a high tolerance for people and crowds, the dog shit got worse everywhere, because many acquired a dog during Covid.
I agree SE London Peckham etc got very banker central which was East Dulwich before that. There are chichi enclaves everywhere. If there is an artisan butcher/now increasingly veg shop as everyone goes vegan etc you know you are going to luck out on your house price.

If you have lost your tolerance for people, move to the coast. Some of the Kent and Sussex coast line has gone chichi too.

Londoners voted for that vile man khan who had to ask for definition of child grooming. He doesn't give a toss about crime rate as long as DEI target is met. What do you expect?

People increasingly can’t afford to raise families in London, if they don’t have access to social housing.

£1m+ for a house.

£2-2.5k a month nursery fees.

London has always been a city of rich and poor - but it’s going to get a lot more extreme.

Sorry just catching up. Some really valid points.
I think another issue, if I really did think about it, in my area, integration hasn’t really worked and there are bubbling tensions between remaining working class folk, the new cohort of young hipsters and the migrant population. I know people get uncomfortable talking about immigration and race, but in many areas around me there is a dominant population (Bangladeshi) who have failed to assimilate, whereby we are now on to 2nd and 3rd generation families where the children don’t mix with the white working class children, don’t speak English etc. My children are past school age but our nearest school children with English as a foreign language as of 2022 statistics is 92%- these are mostly children born and raised in this country. You have whole schools of Bangladeshi children and whole schools of white and black children- with the sides never ever really mixing.
I am a very liberal leftist and I would not have believed what I see here until I saw it with my own eyes.
I think we do have to have an honest conversation about how we see the future of London and other areas when we have groups that will not integrate and do not want to do so. We also need to be honest about the cultural differences (IE litter dropping, sanitation) and start to educate communities in how we ‘operate’ in this country. This would stop tensions perhaps?

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).

I guess the areas around here are either
people very poor- in social housing
people very rich- in nice shiny new builds or Victorian properties.
there is no balance and no inbetween.

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 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 ;)

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

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.

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