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?

I moved to London at 22 years old having lived in beautiful North Yorkshire and Devon before that. I'm now 46 and still love London. It's home. The culture, energy, diversity, opportunities... yes there are not so brilliant bits but overall, I couldn't imagine living anywhere else.

That's fair enough. But plenty of posters seem to take the odd view that it's a binary choice between London or a tiny village with nothing to do.

Jellied eels are fucking disgusting.

i tried them once just to see what they were like.

i have eaten rotten shark in Iceland and the rotten shark tasted better.

All those 'Escape to the Country' programmes have a lot to answer for 😁

Conversely I think lots of non London dwellers think London is one big chaotic homogeneous blob when in reality it's a series of individual areas side by side, all with their own distinct character and atmosphere. If I was blindfolded and dropped into Camden or High Street Ken I would know where I was by the smell/noise/atmosphere.

I know right! Perhaps for people who live in London everywhere else feels like a tiny village or one horse town. London is not the centre of the universe.

Correct.

I live near london but not in the city itself, in the equally expensive commuter band around it.

Honestly its jobs. In my line of work there are just so so many more good jobs in london. There are probably 1/50th of the jobs in London, available outside London. The London ones pay more competitively too. When a regional job comes up people can be fighting over it because there won't be another for a while & if course it's cheaper to live up north or in the midlands.

Then there is the general career stuff - in London there are events - loads of specialist conferences, training opportunities, recruiters run networking sessions etc. If I worked elsewhere I'd have to come down to london regularly to access that stuff, there's barely any of it in regional areas. Also the roles & events that are based outside london typically have a different focus and are geared to smaller UK only businesses, whereas I'm in the international/large business space and the issues are very different.

As a mixed race Muslim women raising other mixed races babies I feel safe here. I’ve travelled to other parts and feel like I’m in the film Inception and I’m in someone else’s dream and they know. I hate feeling ‘foreign’, here I can just exist and be normal.

I think it would be nice to live in a quiet, leafy, pretty road hidden away somewhere in central London but places like Islington or Chiswick have never appealed to me, despite being expensive.

I completely agree. I have lived in other UK cities, I absolutely don't think it's a choice between London and a rural village. But London has a lot more going on than other cities in the UK.

I'm not knocking people for making the trade off that they prefer another UK city but this thread asked why people like London and part of the answer for me is that there is a lot more going on which we take full advantage of.

This is true, and I have to say, having done a tour of the country with my DC for university places, I can completely envision myself living (for a short while, anyway) in quite a few other cities - Sheffield, Leeds and Edinburgh in particular. Even the much maligned Birmingham is fab, imo, and was the great and exciting metropolis when I was growing up in the rural midlands. I think we have a wonderful heritage in the UK of exciting, vibrant, history filled cities combined with some of the most beautiful countryside and coastline in the world. London is my cherry on top, but I totally accept it's not for everyone.

OP obviously hasn't spent much time in London

I mean on a more serious note, in the UK so much stuff is in London.

if you look at other countries eg the us, New York is the finance place, Hollywood is films, Washington is the government.

Australia is similar - government in Canberra, etc.

in the uk government and finance and creative stuff is pretty much all in London.

we’d actually probably do better if more of it was spread out - the bbc did a big move to Salford many years ago which has kickstarted a lot of creative stuff in Manchester, and the government try to put stuff around the country (dvla in Swansea etc) but mostly stuff is still in London.

People are complaining about the crowds/bustle, which is equally true in central Manchester and Glasgow, so I assume those people are comparing London to more rural areas/small towns.

I grew up just outside Brighton and have lived in lots of different UK cities (Canterbury, Bristol, Sheffield) and visited most of the others over the years. If you are going to live in a city, London has better amenities and better public transport than smaller cities just because it has a bigger population to support them. If you aren’t going to live in a city, fair enough enjoy your country walks and peace and quiet.

I have lived in Berlin and Toronto, and would quite happily live in either of those again. Probably Stockholm, Barcelona, Madrid, Vienna or Glasgow too (Edinburgh is too touristy). I wouldn’t want to live in Bristol, Newcastle, Munich, London Ontario, or any smaller city long term, even though they are perfectly nice places to visit for a few days. It’s fine if people feel differently, OP asked people why they want to live in London and people are responding. It isn’t a criticism of people who don’t.

I’d love to live in London. I think it’s amazing. Only if I had lots of money though

I fully intend to buy a flat in London later in life. Currently live semi rural in a very nice market town and am happy enough but miss the buzz of a big city. Being close to restaurants, the arts etc., and public transport to access them, has got to be better in old age?

A lot of BBC drama is filmed in and around Cardiff.

I’m a Londoner. Why would I want to live elsewhere

You can move here now!

If I could live well in London (my definition of well), I would absolutely live there. Lived there for 20yrs and loved it. Was very sad to leave. Our income is £193k and it’s still not enough.

I've lived in London, and honestly do not see the appeal. Housing is so expensive, it's just stupid. Also high crime rate.

I honestly think that most Londoners have no clue how much better they could live if they went "up North". They think we are all neanderthals.

I live 20 mins from Edinburgh. My 5 bedroom house with a spectacular sea view is worth about £340k. In London it would be a few Million.

When threads like these appear I’m always reminded of the montage someone made of people in Coronation Street saying ‘London?!’ incredulously, as if the very thought of going there is shocking 😂

We lived in London because of the close proximity to three (4 if you count stansted) international airports, and the ease of which decent jobs in my industry came up.

we left for a slower pace, sunlight in the winter & to be closer to family

Birmingham is indeed much maligned, bab. It has some really lovely areas (and some awful ones, but they're no different from the awful parts of London).

I do wish I had easier access to the same range of museums etc that London has - but I do think (some) Londoners kid themselves as to how often the actually do those things. One of the reasons I opted not to work in London is that job pressures would prevent me from actually enjoying all those lovely activities. Ultimately we're all making compromises, just different ones. You can't work in London and live in Shropshire 😍

Yes, don’t watch Corrie any more but I remember people talking about “down south” like it was the other side of the world.