According to films – yes. But if you move to W11 thinking you’ll nab a cute one-bed on a bookseller’s salary and bump into Julia Roberts, well, think again. The average flat price in Notting Hill is currently £890,000 according to (shudder) Foxtons. Julia Roberts is based in Malibu. And there are just an estimated 112 independent bookshops left in London. I am afraid that, as with a lot of big cities, living in London is a bit like playing roulette. Some win big, some struggle to catch a break. Either way, there is always someone waiting to take your place.
Why live in London? Some feel they have to. Mostly this is for work. It goes without saying that for national political careers, one must be London-based, as the Houses of Parliament are situated in Westminster. In the media, all of the big national papers are located in London, as are the majority of broadcasters, and the regional press is struggling. The City of London is the world’s financial capital (there’s an annual arm wrestle in a cocktail bar with Wall Street bankers to maintain the title). Hospitality, tourism and services are all booming. In fact, London’s economy, as it is never tires of boasting, props up the whole of the UK – and grows at twice the national rate.
There are signs, however, of shifts. Birmingham is a growing financial hub and Channel 4 has been given a government deadline to move from the capital. The BBC moved a chunk of its production to Salford (Greater Manchester) in 2011. The “northern powerhouse”, who knows, might grow to be an actual thing rather than a line repeated in every speech circa 2015, and the election of the regional “metro” mayors has gone some way towards devolving power. Some things, though, are moving further afield: post-Brexit, the European Medicines Agency moved to Amsterdam.
But London is still “where it is at”. For culture vultures, London is a heaven inside a ring-road. There are an estimated 241 theatres and more than 250 registered art galleries and museums. London is the birthplace of punk and grime. For foodies, there are 72 Michelin-starred restaurants in the capital, and thousands of local cafes and establishments that are the gems of their own communities. The Turkish restaurants on Green Lanes are said to be some of the best in Europe. Marie’s Cafe on Lower Marsh is a new genre – Thai greasy spoon. For lovers of scenery, Hampstead Heath offers one of the UK’s most beautiful spaces. The city’s history rises like damp from the underground (the first tube journey took place in 1863) and floats to the surface of the Thames (where, no biggie, woolly mammoths used to quench their thirst).
London state schools, once a significant cause for concern, are now among the best in the UK after a transformation effort (noticeably the London Challenge in 2003) that is studied around the world. The Times Higher Education rankings put 20 of the top 93 UK universities in London, which makes London’s 400,000 student population understandable.
So why wouldn’t someone live in London? Well: money. A pint of beer costs £4.08 on average (it’s roughly three quid in the country). Almost everything is expensive in London. The things listed above: expensive. (Not all, mind, many museums are free.) But, oof: the cost of living for those without concessions. You see, one of the things to come to terms with about living in London is that that view you love so much, the glass skyline glittering in the sun, is a half-illusion punctured by the Shard, given that 27% of Londoners live in poverty, and that is after housing costs have been accounted for. Communities who have called London home for generations are being pushed out by rising rents and gentrification. Local businesses lock their premises for the final time. Commutes grow longer and more expensive. Landlords run riot.
As for crime, London by many measures is not worse than the rest of the UK. Though a recent surge in knife crime has caught attention, its homicide level is not the highest in the UK for its population size (that would be Greater Manchester) and a lot of people who think of London as a big scary kraken of crime have never lived in London.
But many have had enough. Almost 300,000 people left the city in the year to mid-2016, a 10-year high. Has it grown too big for its Dover Market-bought boots? Watch the capital’s housing market plummet. It is down 15% post-Brexit, and we’re about to watch it go full Jenga, while the rest of the UK property market upticks nicely. Brexit means Brexit which actually means banks are packing up and moving to Frankfurt. Meanwhile youngsters are picking up seashells and affordable flats on the Kent coast. The Arts Council just announced plans to spend £170m more outside London; Manchester City just won the Premier League; and a show about Derry is the greatest thing on television.
So, the answer to the question: should you live in London? Well, I apologise for sounding like a life coach but it depends on who you are, and what you want in life. If you are someone who enjoys a leisurely stroll during rush hour and takes a relaxed attitude to escalator etiquette, absolutely not. If you are a burgeoning family already based in London, with a need for a garden and, struggling on a budget of what elsewhere would be a very sizeable sum of money, perhaps. (If, however, you’re the type of parent who enjoys, say, baby raves, then, yeah … stay in London.)
If you are an immigrant, consider it: more than 300 languages are spoken, there’s an immigrant population of 3 million already, and our economy needs you, despite what some are saying of late. If you want to be able to see the stars at night and breathe clean air, then no (this is something I have been considering recently, on both an existential and a lung-based level), because London has some of the worst pollution in the UK. If you are a money launderer, hun, you don’t even have to live in London, the city welcomes you with open arms. If you like friendliness in strangers … still live in London, because I don’t agree (and I’m a northerner), with the trope of it being an unfriendly place.
Should you live in London if you are homeless and have lived in the city for years and your entire support network is based here, yet your council is trying to move to you to some faraway part of the country? Hell yes, you should live in London. Write to your MP. If you want a transport network that means five minutes for the next train is deemed an annoyingly lengthy wait, also yes. If you don’t enjoy quasi-jaunty pub signs that crush the soul, then no. Or, yes, but know that you shall have to endure them. Day after day, after day.
- Hannah Jane Parkinson writes for the Guardian on pop culture, music, tech, football, politics and mental health
