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Comment by kmlx | Hacker News Reader

i moved to London a decade ago, and it's incredible how much the city has changed. whole new neighborhoods have been built on the sites of former industrial parks. existing neighborhoods are expanding, and new skyscrapers are appearing all over the place. even new (and huge) infrastructure projects.

as a european, this change is something special. in europe you will rarely find a city as big and important as London where there is so much construction taking place in every single corner of the city.

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It's astounding how much greener it is in the pictures.

It can take trees ~30 years to reach maturity where they can span across an entire street.

I assumed that part of the reason the nicer neighborhoods in the EU and most the US were so nice is because they had always been green and nice.

But maybe it only takes ~10 years or so?

Not familiar with London, but looking at the pictures, it looks like maybe this is a relatively new thing?

If so, that's kind of exciting, because I figured it might take way longer for other parts of other cities to become as nice and pleasant as the select few crazy expensive neighborhoods we all love.

That caught my eye - but I think in most cases it's just the time of year the photo was taken. Most trees are deciduous and none of the streets are particularly green in November - March. Obviously actual building sites (like the olympic park in the first picture) excepted.

London's been a very green city for decades, if not a hundred years, because of planting done when victoirian development started. If anything, the last years seem to have had a reduction in tree cover, to fit in all of these new developements. The saplings carelessly planted in their place will take decades to reach maturation.

I grew up in the rural midwest and one day I was with my parents on some back road. Dad pointed to a woods and told me that when he was a kid that was a field. So it only took a 30 or so years for it to turn back into woods.

Another random London (well, UK) tree fact:

“A powerful storm ravaged many parts of the UK in the middle of October 1987.

With winds gusting at up to 100mph, there was massive devastation across the country and 18 people were killed. About 15 million trees were blown down. Many fell on to roads and railways, causing major transport delays. Others took down electricity and telephone lines, leaving thousands of homes without power for more than 24 hours.”

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/cas...

Agree. Meanwhile the number of cars noticably decreased. Lower noise, better air, significantly more cyclists.

The 20mph speed limit certainly helped to achive this. (Too slow to move around with a car.)

the congestion charge helped as well in that part of london.

European cities have finally given up their architectural conservatism.

You can do America (urban sprawl) or Asia (skyscrapers).

France hasn't unfortunately.

I also wish we stopped giving more importance to preserving old buildings and architecture at the cost of making today's life hell for the residents.

Yes the Paris everyone sees today was the product of Hausman bulldozing the place. Cities are living creatures not preserved corpses in a mausoleum.

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