Look at our productive friends in Germany, they have Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg.
It's not surprising rent is so high when all the good jobs are in one place.
1. 2-3 floors houses, so low population density
2. narrow, middle-age style streets which means commuting by car is close to impossible
3. public transports already used way over their capacity (it's a small miracle every morning that on over-crowded tube platforms which do not have doors that people do not get pushed / fall on the tracks while the trains are accelerating 10cm away from their face - a miracle only thanks to british commuters being overly calm and courteous).
4. Very restrictive planning permissions which makes it very difficult to build anywhere outside of a few spots, which become covered with sky scapers, and a gvt / local councils determined to keep the real estate bubble going at any cost, including sponsoring 100% LTV loans with tax payer money, instead of allowing new developments.
[NB Of course there are perfectly good reasons for wanting to live in London - just never appealed to me!]
Would love to Live in Edinburgh - but the world's laundered money doesn't flow through Edinburgh :(
What do all the actuaries do in Edinburgh then - I've seen to have known loads of them over the years! Or is pensions/life stuff not on the "sexy" side of things?
Of the places I know employ actuaries in Edinburgh: Standard Life, Scottish Widows, Royal London... and there are quite a few consulting actuary companies around as well.
There's also been a new build boom in the East. Some areas were almost affordable for a while.
The big advantage compared to the rest of the UK is networking potential. Even the biggest competing cities - Manchester, Birmingham - are an order of magnitude less happening. And places like Leeds and Swindon have almost nothing at all.
The UK has really screwed the proverbial pooch here. Compared to traditional industry, Internet and creative businesses have huge potential for almost no infrastructure spend, and can create jobs almost everywhere.
Aggressively promoting startups across the country should have been a no-brainer. But... that's not what we got.
Yeah, I heard Berlin really changed a lot in the 90s...