To wonder why people choose to live in London?

[Cantbloodyrememberthenameonthread]

I always wonder. And reading a recent thread prompted me to ask the question. Why do people do it by choice? People complain about the house prices (rightly), ulez, nursery fees, cost of everything being more expensive, commutes, tubes etc.

if you’re not absolutely tied to London for work or health or I guess family. Why do you choose to live there when there are so many cheaper easier lifestyle options in the country?

The north east coastline, Northumberland in particular, is famously grim.

Most people go there for jobs. I’m from the NE and there were no jobs there in the 90s. Been here ever since. I’m retiring soon and will move to a pretty, rural place, where they will moan about Londoners driving up house prices for local people. Totally ignoring that I and millions of other Londoners spent our working lives bankrolling their pubic services. You are welcome.

The North East is a tough move from London.

I no longer live there, but I regard having lived there for a decade as one of the great experiences of my life. It's a great city. Worth my rabbit hutch flat and black snot.

Re London parks, the UK city I live in is ranked 4th in Europe for green space relative to its size, London ranks 24th!

Yes, but no one lives in London for green spaces but if you are near a park, they are lovely resources.
There is something very special about a big city park

I live in the NE, love visitng London and can see the appeal! However I couldn’t move there now I’m older and have to settle for lower disposable income. We’d have the same salary but less disposable income, smaller house etc. I also love the coast and the countryside walks, easy access to the Lake District etc.
If I had the same standard of living as I do now with disposable income etc then I would consider it!

Obsessed with your username 🥰

Fellow cat lady?

Where I live (southwest) we pay the same or more for a coffee out than in London. We pay close to the same on rent and house prices. We don’t have subsidised transport and must own at least one car because public transport is a disaster here. The schools are not as good- the ‘London effect’ of the extra funding injected there is real.

i think we spend more on our day to day stuff here than we would if we lived in London. Then you have all the convenience of air travel, museums and public amenities, which we just don’t have here.

When I get to pension age, I want to be living in Westminster, lunching at lovely restaurants, being labelled an 'icon' by young gay boys 🤭🤭🤭

You're not unreasonable to ask, I often wonder why people choose to live where they do.

For me, it's beautiful anonymity, access to as much varied art and culture as anyone can handle in easy reach, muddling along with people from all over the place speaking different languages and thinking differently from one another, the feeling of being 'where it happens' and passing the people making it happen quite casually in among the rest of us (if you think it shouldn't be where it happens that's a different question - it happens here currently whether you like it or not), a feeling of safety mostly everywhere, and that nobody cares if you want to do something that seems slightly out of the ordinary because there is no one ordinary. The sense that you are joining millions of people over hundreds of years who have forged different paths on the streets you walk. Mostly that differences are celebrated not squashed out.

I'm from London, but left 20 years ago and glad I did. I never felt like an individual there, just part of its smothering environment. I've lived in a couple of countries since and prefer where I am now, still in Europe, to being in London.

London is an impressive city with a million things to do, however, day-to-day, it just feels like pure drudgery. There's no space & so much of it is shabby and unkempt.

I can completely understand why people live there. I’m a wilderness girl, personally, but London is beautiful. So many parks, such diverse culture and language. Amazing galleries and museums. Bad bits too - I find the contrast between extreme wealth and poverty awful, but can absolutely see why people love it. Spent many unforgettable times staying at my friends in my 20s: gigs, music, clubs. Too much for me now, though 😂

Not as many Reform voters as everywhere else.

Fun. Exciting. Always changing, often for the better, sometimes for the worse over the 40+ years I've lived here. But that's what makes it interesting too.

Jobs, careers etc. Yes there is a bit of hybrid work now but if you are ambitious, in most industries that are growing and evolving and pay well, it means London and being in the office and the melee and the networking and the relationships that don't get built if you are in a satellite office in Carlisle or Milton Keynes.

All walks of life are here. Everything from the opera in Covent Garden to a grimy illegal bar in a warehouse in Canning Town. I don't go to them but I am glad they exist and show the breadth of human creativity and interests.

If my life was a potter around B&M to buy a new nicknack, a playground and maybe a coffee at Costa every week, I'd lose my mind. (Thinking of a specific town here)

It's one of the most beautiful places in the world! Or is that your point- sorry, being slow 😂

That doesn't make it right.

I don’t live in London, I live in Gloucester. I have done the museums here, they all take about 1-2 hours and rarely change exhibits etc. Not quite the same as the Science Museum.

Personally I prefer to live near the countryside but can 100% see the appeal of living in London. Horses for courses and all that.

That’s how I felt. It was just drudgery.

I never went to art galleries, museums, the threatre or anything else people rave about. No one I knew did. We had to work. Our money went on extortionate rent and we were knackered.

I do more of that now I live in Dudley. I now have the money to travel and go to places and the time to do it now that I’m paying £500 a month on a mortgage rather than over 2k a month in rent!

(And I’ll have you know, Dudley has a castle, a zoo and a living museum, and nature reserves and forests literally on my doorstep).

This is lovely! Yes, the history is extraordinary. And I love the endless mix of cultures when I’m there.

This again?
OK.

It has the widest choice possible of incredible art/theatre/music etc, a fair bit of it free or cheap. It's full of diverse and interesting shops and food places, both long-established institutions and new and exciting ones. It has lovely green spaces. It's full of people who are fascinating because they've moved across the country or the world to be here because they had something they wanted to do and/or someone they wanted to be.

Who cares about ulez when the public transport is so good? And anyway, why complain about something that improves public health and cuts road deaths?
The tube/overground/buses/trams/boats transport millions of people around a huge city every day, largely without problems. I don't think it's particularly expensive (buses have a flat fare of £1.75 per journey, and you can get off and on a bus if it's within an hour), but also it's worth it for the speed and convenience. Every patch of London is its own little neighbourhood and there are so many, you will find 'your' London village.

What I like most, though, is the acceptance. People will not turn a hair if you walk down the road in Victorian garb/punk regalia/a ballgown at 10am – or, like me, work-from-home terrible joggers and holey jumpers. Or, again like me once, eyebrows encrusted with beauty products from a facial, because you went grocery shopping afterwards and didn't look in a mirror

lived there for 20+yrs (stayed after Uni) LOVED it, only moved to DH's home town when we couldn't afford a house with a garden to raise our DC and were seduced by what we saw in estate agent's windows there.

I've been out of London for 30+yrs now and would move back in a heartbeat if I could replicate the open spaces I have access to here and my lovely garden - but that would require winning Euromillions. I do buy a ticket!

It's a fabulous city - I try to get up there as much as I can just for a day to nip around museums and galleries and window shop...

What I like most, though, is the acceptance. People will not turn a hair if you walk down the road in Victorian garb/punk regalia/a ballgown at 10am – or, like me, work-from-home terrible joggers and holey jumpers. Or, again like me once, eyebrows encrusted with beauty products from a facial, because you went grocery shopping afterwards and didn't look in a mirror

And you think this is unique to London?

I'm a Cockney, but had to move out to afford somewhere to live.
I'd go back if I could - there's nowhere else like it & it's got everything I need.

There is a lot of stuff here! If I want to go to the cinema I have a choice of 3 within a ten minute bus ride of my house. 5 swimming pools/leisure centres. Multiple options for DC to play tennis, football, rugby, gymnastics, dance etc. 4 big parks. 3 different food markets on a Sunday. Innumerable other places to eat from all around the world. I can walk pretty much anywhere I need to get to, or ride my bike. Multiple outstanding schools - I had a choice of 4 outstanding primaries to pick from when we applied. The secondaries are also decent (some are outstanding, some are good).

And I live in a fairly unremarkable part of SE London, not central London at all. I have lived plenty of other places including overseas and there just isn’t the same choice of things to do - there might be one leisure centre, one cinema 20 miles away, a couple of coffee shops. All of which need me to get in the car and make a special journey to, I can’t just pop up the road.

London has the biggest urban forest in the world. Something like 9 million trees I think - one for every person who lives there.

I love the energy of the place, the world class everything from theatre to museums, the history around every corner, the food from all over the world. The night skyline, the markets, the fact that whilst you're drinking coffee in a greasy spoon cafe the king is opening parliament in the next street.

One day last week I went to see the 1400 year old Sutton Hoo helmet at the British Museum, drank in a 500 year old pub where Charles Dickens drank, saw the longest running play on earth and then dropped down to the ultra modern Elizabeth line where the whole of London seemed to be having a party.

Everywhere has its merits but there is nowhere like London for feeling 100% alive and at the centre of all that Britain has been, is and will be.