To think London has become a parody of itself?

[NattyBrickMember]

Everything is overpriced, gentrification is out of control, and the chaos somehow feels unbearable and iconic at the same time. AIBU to think London has become a caricature of what it used to be - like a city pretending to be itself for tourists and TikTok?

Lived in London all my life - 32 years. Maybe it depends on which part of London you’re in, but to me, the changes over the years have been hard to ignore.

London has always been expensive and crowded. Strikes are nationwide, not just a London thing. HTH.

Will do. We make sure they are written in Cockney so nobody else understands them although we heard rumours of people in the Midlands working on an Enigma Machine to try and crack the code.

It's so huge and so varied - it does depend where you live.

I agree housing costs are insane, but the rest is just life. I’ve lived in London for twenty years and still love it. To me its such a beautiful and exciting city (even from my zone 3 pebbledash)

@neverknowinglyunreasonable that reminds me, I can’t be on pigeon wrangling in Trafalgar Square this week, can you find someone else to cover?

I’ll take an extra shift rehearsing with the cor blimey guv’nor cockney caricature choir instead if that helps the rota?

The centre is now very strange. Full of crappy souvenir shops, vape shops, American sweet shops. Then there is some top end retail clinging on.

The good thing is the food which is so much better than 30 years ago. But it's a very bland place to go now.

please provide proof that 'gentrification is out of control...'

Bland? Have you ever been to the National Gallery? The Portrait Gallery? The V&A? The Science Museum? The Natural History Museum? Museum of London? Kensington Palace?...........
....this could take pages....

I agree with you OP.

I lived in London for almost 30 years and left 3 years ago for a small seaside town.

I just had enough of public transport, the ridiculous cost of living and the overcrowding. Not to mention anti-social behaviour and gang crime.

I think it definitely has something to do with me being older and wanting a quieter, greener life with more space.

But, I also think London lost a lot of its character with chains and developers taking over.

I think if you are lucky to have a house on a leafy street, a well paid job and you don't rely on the awful public transport, then living in London is a great experience but for the average person it no longer is the case.

I still work for a London-based organisation but I don't enjoy the days when I have to be in the office at all.

Now that I live outside London I am so happy to have a healthier lifestyle with people who are actually friendly and more relaxed.

Which strikes are you referring to? Teachers were on strike at our school earlier this year, but I don’t think that’s anything to do with posh flats or gentrification.
London is actually cleaner than it has been for years.
Rent has always been expensive, although rent here is as expensive as most cities, (currently paying almost £1k a month for uni accommodation in another UK city.)
The tubes are always packed during rush hour and on weekends, nothing has changed there.
Yes some areas have been cleaned up and young people have flocked to rent or buy in those boroughs where you don’t have to sell a kidney to live.
Have I covered everything?
YABVU

I lived in London for decades and still visit frequently. I don’t recognise the London you describe.

You are describing a place that all the London-based PPs don't recognise.
There are no constant strikes (Avanti West Coast is on strike every sunday but they aren't just concerned with London)
In which areas is gentrification pushing people out with its empty flats? (we've already asked for some evidence!)
Lived here for 35 years. It has scuzzy parts, it has 'naice' parts. Same applies to it's occupants. Visitors can be a pain tho...
Again, you need to provide some evidence to support your (daft and untrue) assertions

London is great. Lived there fore a decade. There is a difference in expectations. Where we now live we have to go to the next village which has a bus four times a day. If you wait more than five minutes on the central line for a tube that is a long time. Massive theatres showing shows of all types. Great and varied restaurants. It is expensive now to live there, but it always was. We can do more to control this though, particularly by banning foreign ownership and limiting investment activity.

Not really. It's pretty much like a lot of capital cities. Mix of people going about their lives and work, with some areas that are of historical or cultural significance that attract and cater for tourists. I can never fathom this dramatising about the place. You'd think it was some sort of mystical fantasy world the way some people go on.

Personally I love London more now than when I previously lived there in the 90’s. It a fab vibrant city and I much prefer it to some of the surrounding places in the Home Counties, I’m right on the edge and prefer to travel in rather out to the suburbs go shopping and eat.

It's changed since I lived there but to me, it's still an amazing, vibrant city. I don't really get a sense of disorder as such, but maybe that's because I'm not experiencing the city on a daily basis, only for a few days at a time.

This thread is making me laugh a lot.

Mate. You said it yourself; there's a lot of people here. If you don't like it, feel free to sling your hook and leave your pearly hat at Watford.

I work in the City 2-3 times a month and I don’t think it has recovered at all since the pandemic. Very quiet, lots of offices and retail premises to let and lots of the old independent cafes and restaurants did not survive so often the only option for a quick lunch is a crappy chain. I remember when the Waterloo and City at rush hour used to be so busy you would have to wait for 2-3 trains before you could get on, now you can just stroll on and get seat, even in the supposed morning rush.

I live in a town close to London and the stink of weed is a daily thing now. That's definitely new. I hate it.

I love London, I love being able to go in whenever I feel like it. Originally from the north. Never going back.

I don't know which areas you are specifically referring to. I've lived all over London - Walhamstow, Hackney, Kew, Putney, Deptford, Forest Hill, Canary Wharf, Tufnell Park - I don't recognise what you are saying. Yes, properties got more expensive but they also did all over the country. Strikes are everywhere up and down the country. I currently live in the West Country and we have strikes. Tube is only packed in rush hour - same as 20 years ago. Some areas in London are considerably nicer and safer thanks to gentrification. But if you crave raw London experience, West Croydon is still largely untouched by it.

Awful public transport?!

Where in the UK has better public transport than London? Pretty sure your seaside town does not.

There are also far more vibrant independent restaurants, pubs, pop up retail etc in London that most provincial towns because the number of residents and visitors supports that.

Compare that to decaying retail in many small towns - a few chains hang on but outside a few tourist hotspots, retail is in far worse state outside the big cities than in them.

Londoners also on average walk or use active transport like cycling more than any other part of the UK so it's certainly not true that the lifestyle is universally unhealthy.

Except the air pollution. That is definitely a problem.

It's not a utopia but it also isn't the hell hole so many people seem to want it to be.

It's fine that you decided you want a small, sleepy town. London is not a small sleepy town and cannot pretend to be.

This weekend, I was on a busy bus. A man with two children was on board with a buggy. He was wearing a Jewish skull cap.
A Somali woman in a hijab boarded with another buggy. Regular bus users will know two buggies can fit but it's a bit of jenga to get them in.
The man and woman smiles at each other, worked together to fit them in and then compared notes about how both kids in buggies had Bluey toys on them.
A young man then got up and offered the woman and her older child his seat while another woman was busy waving and smiling at the baby.
And then to wrap up this story, everyone talked about the weather and when spring would arrive, fulfilling every cliche about being British.

Given the grim news about German elections that I was reading at the time and everything that is happening in the US, I actually felt slightly proud of living here (and usually I think being proud of where you live or born is stupid because it is largely a matter of chance)

I live in SE London. 20 minutes into the West End. I love it. If you’re tired of London you’re tired of life

Doing this would be amazing! Tell me please how best to go about this.
. Lived in London in my twenties but rarely get chance now to go back due to the high accommodation costs.

This is definitely true. I hate going into town now and avoid it at all costs. Used to love it but it now feels seedy and the people are awful. It’s gone to shit IMO. Plus all the music venues gone and not replaced. I saw an application for a jazz bar in Covent Garden with a licence to 1am was refused by police on the grounds of safety of people leaving? Such bullshit. There’s an agenda to kill off the nightlife. All in all it’s a much less vibrant, ruder, less safe place than it was 20 years ago. I don’t recognise it anymore.