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 really think litter is a big downer

I very much hope we haven’t lost our road guy as the street looks awful after a few weeks

Plus anyone who leaves dog poo around, horrible

I still get energy from the city and love parts of it, but just past us is really a down area. It just drops quite a bit

Its lovely round here - south east London.

Well also - and slightly bizarrely - these are the same houses.

I know more than one person who has bought a terrace house in zones 1-3 for £1m+ and found they have a large / extended family living next door that are known as local drug dealers / gangsters, police turning up at all hours etc.

London has always been a real mix of rich and poor, but you now have these weird parallell societies, with half needing £££ for housing while others get long term low cost rentals.

I massively support council housing, but in London there’s a real challenge that housing for the majority is so wildly expensive, having council housing is like winning the lottery. And half the time it’s exactly the same housing.

I think London is the smartest I’ve ever known it! With the new developments at kings Cross, Borough, Battersea etc it’s hugely improved.

but yes still areas of poverty and poor urban planning - but those have always existed. They really shouldn’t and I hope it continues to improve

Khan doesn’t help. Hopefully out at some point, been ages

As a mum you don’t care for shops and restaurants? I didn’t know when I had a child I had to give up shopping or going to restaurants. How weird.

I live in a not-posh bit of Zone 4 and was actually thinking on my way to work this morning that my Council is fairly decent:

-newly refurbished swimming pool/gym with friendly staff
-library open 6 days a week, inc after office hours most weeknights
-knackered footpaths currently being resurfaced
-green areas regularly mown (the grass does grow really fast with our wet summers of course)

The main problem is domestic fly-tipping. I used to live 10 minutes up the road in the leafier Tory voting bit (same Council) and it just wasn't an issue there. The Council offers what seems to me to be good rubbish/recycling services, and there is a very efficient tip, but how do you force lazy skanks to use them? Why do so many people think the rest of the world wants to walk past their stained mattress, broken kids toys and obsolete telly?

To end on a positive note, I was on a bus the other day when 3 feral teenage lads slouched on without paying. Then they started smoking. The driver stopped the bus and shouted that they had to get off. He was a short, slight young man and there were 3 of them, but his anger was audible; how dare they violate the holy sanctity of public transport! The 3 scrotes sloped off sulkily muttering. It was brilliant.

I haven't been to London for quite some time but what you're describing sounds like the area I'm from. Housing has become so expensive and as the older generation have downsized or died their homes have been turned into HMOs or buy to let's. Less homeowners seems to mean less people giving a shit about the area. Everything just looks grubby and uncared for.

Sorry, I was actually replying to another poster who travels to London regularly, but lives in Somerset.
My arthritic fingers missed the Quote button!

I love London it's my home town and always will be. I recently moved to Bracknell from Ealing, I was like you feeling overwhelmed by the decline in my area which I can only speak of as I lived there. I've learnt to take the balance of what it is I'm actually missing and what I want. I miss the old Ealing, the community, vibrant, beautiful green Ealing. Over the years I've seen the decline in our high street, the community a lot of places have closed due to no funding and the ever growing sky rise buildings. Though I do understand also that we need to build new homes as our population grows, also the area is what you make it, Bracknell is not Ealing but it's less hectic and seems pleasant enough. I've only been here for less than a month and so far no issues it's very well connected, I have two buses running from outside my home, yes they do come every 30mins but that just means you need to plan your journeys rather than when living in London you could pop out and you knew there was a bus every 5 mins. Then again in London I was always stuck in traffic here in Bracknell there is of course traffic but only in the morning and in rush hour not throughout the day. I do miss Ealing of course it's still early days here but I plan to make the most of Bracknell and explore the area, plus I'm not bound to stay here one good thing I would say about renting is you have flexibility to move around if you don't like an area.

I didn't, nor did anyone I know, but the no hopers put up alongside Khan were equally awful.

Ohh! Although, if you have a spare few quid. The request still remains :)

All cities are disgusting and dirty in general a certain way out and a certain way in

I do agree though that as a whole, all things considered, we are lucky to have the standard of living we have here in the UK.
I think the issue is, many of us remember a time with much less people, less litter, less noise.

Having lived all over London and watched parts gentrify over time and some parts stubbornly not, the dividing line is property ownership. The central parts of London are now safety deposit boxes for foreign investors who want standard flats to protect their money.

The outer zones depend on owner occupancy. The more resident owners there the better it is. The noticeable thing in decline is landlords who are exploiting their tenants.

London is truly awful. I only go LHR or paddington on way to LHR if taking the train.

I grew up in London as a child .I moved when my parents grew tired of it in the 70s .Live in Bournemouth now . There are many homeless people . shops have closed .I still visit London and enjoy it. seems rather grubby though!

I’ve lived in London for a very long time and it certainly wasn’t better when I was younger. I moved here in the 70s and it was quite run down. There were a lot of empty properties, you couldn’t get a decent coffee for love or money out of Soho, public transport was abysmal particularly buses, as were parks and green spaces. Most rental properties didn’t have central heating or other amenities we now see as essential. Housing is expensive so I can see the problems for the younger generation but the area where I live in Zone 2 has seen change for the positive as many other areas of London have.

Yes, the councils are strapped for cash because of years of austerity but I blame the dog shit and rubbish on lazy people who can’t be bothered to pick up after themselves and their animals. Only yesterday I walked behind someone who was shedding the wrapper from his cigarette packet as he walked and dropping it all along the street. There always have been people who don’t value their environment and they always will be.

Horses for courses, I can see some will be put off. Is where you live pretty @Whammyyammy ? Not being sarky just interested

The amount of dogs is excessive, the spike since covid is resulting in so much fouling. I hope that once these new owners realise the work, expense and inconvenience of dog ownership especially in the city, they are not tempted to repeat the experience. I seethe inside every time I see another dog t**d or discarded poo bag. Imagine if it was a human defecating in the street! But somehow because it’s dogs we have to put up with it 😡

@Beowulfa having lived in several different areas of London, it has amazed me how the council respond to fly tipping differently based on area.

In a couple of areas I lived there was junk everywhere. A report to the council would go nowhere.

In the more expensive areas… rarely any junk, if there was it was removed. A tree on our street was removed, and they replanted it immediately. New bins were requested and appeared within weeks.

It made me heavily query the decision making process at the council!

I think it is a nationwide thing but the effects are uneven and not altogether easy to define/analyse.

I live in what MNers would call a "naice" town in the southeast and it's become much dirtier, many of the shops have closed and there's a rampant drug problem. I don't recognise the picture of a well maintained southeast town a pp painted at all. But equally, I grew up in South London and went back to that area recently and could have cried with how completely shitty it is now - derelict buildings, boarded up shops and an atmosphere of barely suppressed violence. If you wanted to buy a house there the price tag would be as likely to put you in intensive care as the knife crime though, so go figure.

My DS recently sent me photos from his trips to Madrid and Barcelona and it all looked so clean you could almost eat off the pavements. So I do think it's a UK thing, either in terms of what's happening or what's being done to mitigate the effects of it.

I mean this was the case when I was in school and that was long before brexit

100% agree with this!

Agree though I think the decline is country-wide. My local town has a street full of shops mostly boarded up and those that remain are charity/betting/vaping shops. I hear rents are sky-high and this makes it unfeasible to make a profit. It doesn't help that few people seem to live in UK city centres, whereas European cities are very much residential as well as commercial and judging by the large number of small/independent shops that survive in those cities, rents must be more affordable.

Not so long ago I visited the English town near to where I grew up - in those days it was prosperous, clean and safe, with large numbers of interesting small shops. You could spend a fun day out just browsing. I was shocked at how it had changed. Not one shop worth looking in and the streets were deserted on what should have been a busy shopping day - I guess few people even live in the town centre, let alone shop there. The market, which used to be full of lovely local produce and useful craft-made items like woollen socks and scarves, was much reduced in size and mostly sold plastic tat you can get anywhere.

The number of homeless is increasing country-wide. I am not sure why the UK government doesn't study other countries that have solved their homeless problem and copy what they do. Anyone who has inside info on this, please enlighten me!