Data maps that sum up London
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
A bus or tram journey is £1.45 regardless of distance, but in Manchester a tram journey is over £3, in Birmingham over £2, in Edinburgh £1.50.
London's tickets are also much better integrated -- only a couple of express train services to airports have special fares, and they all have non-express, cheaper alternatives.
Among international big capitals (which is what you can really compare London to) it has to be the worst. The fact that going to other cities in the UK is prohibitive makes it even worse (it's cheaper to fly to many places in Europe than going to most other UK cities by any means of transportation). If you want to move medium distances within London in reasonable time, it's tube/Overground/DLR and it's prohibitive. Using the Oyster card it's better but still rubbish really.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/04/most_expensive_train...
Like many European cities, paying by cash is being phased out. It's annoying for visitors, but London is ahead here: Oyster cards are refundable, let the user go overdrawn (into the deposit), and contactless credit/debit cards are accepted.
The actual Zone 1 fare is £2.20. A central zone Berlin ticket is €2.60. Copenhagen ~£2.60. Munich €2.60.
A bus is a terribly ineffective way to move around London, especially for commuting to/from the center.
A single fare tube ride is 2.20 in Zone 1, escalating quickly with distance.
London isn't all that dense, and the density is fairly unevenly distributed. There are forest areas within the boundaries of the city. There's a lake near my house - in the middle of suburbia, where people go fishing. I'm 10 minutes on a tram away from farms.
When I lived at Marble Arch and worked in Holborn (find "Oxford Street" on a London map - one of the busiest shopping streets in the world - and they're pretty much opposite ends) there was people everywhere most of the time, but even then finding quiet spots in the nearby parks, or by walking the back streets, was never hard.
Also, I had the ginormous Hampsted Heath park at a 10 minutes walk, parts of which are quite empty all day long.
Unlike many European cities, where the vast majority of buildings are medium/high rise apartments, many boroughs of London have parts more similar to American suburbs.
I certainly miss having a backyard.
I wonder to what extent human psychology is prepared to cope with such relationship overload after 10s of millenia in small communities.
It is quite fascinating to get on trains out of London. With each stop out, the atmosphere loosens up, and the chance of someone talking to you (!) or giving eye contact increases.
What I don't want is irrelevant conversation. I've spent the day at work, the train home is a chance for a break and a rest.
I guess I've become accustomed to the fact of being constantly surrounded, at almost any time of the day or night, although this feeling of permanent busyness is not exactly tangible.
As long as you remain aware of the fallacy of these interactions and don't expect anything from them, you're fine.
In the 1930's London was more populated than it is now, and there were no devices. It was probably a lot smellier, louder and grimier too. I can't imagine coping in that city.
And about the last part of your message, actually most places in London are deserted rather soon in the afternoon. It's just a few selected places that are always busy. Honestly there's a lot to this place, but yeah it's a rather stereotypical big city.
I spend most of my time in the office/lab, which are far less busy, and go a long way towards alleviating any feelings of suffocation.
I should add that the apparent mixing between blacks and whites could be because the grey and blue dots look too similar in the London map, but I still think there is more mixing than in the US.
[1] http://www.wired.com/2013/08/how-segregated-is-your-city-thi...
South Asian and Caribbean populations are overrepresented as users of social housing in London as the jobs they were brought in to do don't exist anymore.
I wonder what the measurable/measured effects of this deliberate integrated housing system have been. I.e. there most have been some objects, and I wonder if they were met.
Source:My Butt
The ramen-eating room sharers in SF will probably also be better off than their London counterparts when they get funding (more likely) and can afford to pay themselves salaries linked to a much higher market rate for developers.
My guess is that they selected some of those groups to prove a point. I doubt that there are more Romanians (3000) than Russians (presumably part of the 55000-strong "Other Europe" group).
http://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/population-nationality/res...
The Russian population probably is included in "Other Europe" but probably isn't as big as people think based on the spending power of a Russian minority in Belgravia...
You can get the data directly from here.
Bring on SVG for this sort of stuff.
For example, I once travelled on the tube in London and on the underground in Liverpool on the same day. In Liverpool people were chatting with fellow passengers.
In London there was silence.
But yeah, there's no real sense of community in London, or in any big city really. Neighbours don't even know each other more often than not. There's pros and cons to this "anonymity" but it's nothing new nor exclusive to London. A lot of people actually like it this way.
I always liked old ladies fussing over my kids when they were small. The kids liked it too.