London Centrism

[scspkr99]

LOl yeah fair enough I'm not expecting you to have them.

[garethom]

LOl yeah fair enough I'm not expecting you to have them.

Yeah man, just wanted to make clear, I'm not the typical SNH armchair professor, claiming to have in-depth knowledge of every subject, just an interesting discussion IMO.

[m8son666]

just seen this article, kinda relevant i guess
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking ... blame.html

[DJoe]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration

this is one of the reasons london is as succesful as it is and explains its draw on business and educated people and why the northern megapolis idea isnt a bad one

[scspkr99]

Yeah man, just wanted to make clear, I'm not the typical SNH armchair professor, claiming to have in-depth knowledge of every subject, just an interesting discussion IMO.

That's fair though that's probably what I do.

I think regional development is really important and I'm interested in what Milliband was suggesting yesterday with money and authority devolved for the regions.

I think there are issues with having specific areas focusing on specific markets just because markets move. In the event that we have an area focused on a market, take cotton and the North West, then the market moves and the industry is fucked

[DJoe]

just seen this article, kinda relevant i guess
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking ... blame.html

i feel this is quite an 'un-torygraph' article

[garethom]

Yeah man, just wanted to make clear, I'm not the typical SNH armchair professor, claiming to have in-depth knowledge of every subject, just an interesting discussion IMO.

That's fair though that's probably what I do.

I think regional development is really important and I'm interested in what Milliband was suggesting yesterday with money and authority devolved for the regions.

I think there are issues with having specific areas focusing on specific markets just because markets move. In the event that we have an area focused on a market, take cotton and the North West, then the market moves and the industry is fucked

Yeah, I get you, that's a good point. Was just because I read about the German cities "keeping each other in check" by specialising in certain industries.

[garethom]

Here's the BBC article I was on about recently. Hebden Bridge was also in the TV show which was hosted by that Evan Davis guy, who also wrote the article.

Good read imo.

Think the TV show was called Mind The Gap or something, might be on iPlayer still.

[sixs]

Since I left the uk my hometown has become part of London

[scspkr99]

Was a good read that I'll see if I can catch that on iplayer later

[lovelydivot]

I'm sick to death with people doing shit for motherfucking big banks...
and big companies and big this and big that....

FUCK THEM AND THEIR OVERREACHING UNINSPIRING UNSUSTAINABLE VISION

How about building a town center with the focus on small businesses
that is vibrant and interesting and will become a top notch place to live and work...

I'm sick of big glossy buildings and no one can afford the door.

I want my old Manayunk back with it's international food market...
I want my old South Street back with it's record shops and it's urban clothing...
I want to afford the building with my apt above my shop...
I want a reason to walk around the block.

I want my community etching lab...
I want my - pay by the hour - black and white darkroom access...
I want my affordable - professional portfolio photographer living in her lush studio...
I want my papermoon - with the delicious spinach dip...back
I want my friends to live just there and there...
I want them to have a reason to drink delicious beers and coffees and eat danishes.
and they can smoke their designer weed if they want - and chocolatiers.

and people customizing my clothes.

and affordable boutique hotels for real travelers.


Make all that happen and the big money will want in on their own.

....and then we jack up the prices - sell them the businesses
and start fresh somewhere else.

[jaydot]

I'm sick to death with people doing shit for motherfucking big banks...
and big companies and big this and big that....

FUCK THEM AND THEIR OVERREACHING UNINSPIRING UNSUSTAINABLE VISION

How about building a town center with the focus on small businesses

.

They already have one, it's called Milton Keynes

[lovelydivot]

Funny you say that - I used to work with a girl from Milton-Keynes.

She was extremely cool...named Rachel.
She married an American Airman and eventually moved to Australia...
Husband got transferred to work security at the Telescope...in Perth.

...I was on a rant just then...

I really respect business like this one on South Street...
Who has resisted complete gentrification...and subsequent failure
and maintained that - original thing - that made them + the neighborhood so great...

Eyes Gallery - Sort of a cross between ethnic art/santeria/low&high brow, latin street art thing..

I love going to this shop - You find ultra weird stuff in there...and it's pretty.
It's grimey and pretty....and smart.





I know London and New York has thousands of these...
been there - done that - so what's next?



...affording the cottage.

This is why I am insane right now.

I'm trying to get my stuff in here - and trust me when I say it's hard.

It's not even my scene...


I don't know what drives these people....




I can even say it's hostile.

I had this asian bitch say that I looked dirty...
and I'm like - Yeah I'm dirty - bitch!! Don't you see I'm in the studio!!

I've got plastic sawdust everywhere!! and I'm spilling sticky stuff.

That's gonna stop you from appreciating the finished piece??!!

Are you dumb?

....and then she goes
"It's not that your big, I have friends that are big....
They just wear those sweaters that are like..."



and I'm looking up at her through my shop googles -
covered in dirt - with a high speed grinder in my hand...

and I'm thinking - someone get this person away from me...
...before I go dental on her...

..tell me to wear "sexy jeggings" one more time and I will fucking clock you.

I'm gonna wear this outfit - with these pants...and you are gonna suck my dick.

[magma]

The show Gareth mentioned is really worth watching... glad they gave it to Evan Davies rather than Robert Peston; much easier to listen to without ripping your ears off the side of your head. A lot of it is based around those ratios and there are a few really bright ideas in it to think about.

IMHO, London-centricness has largely been an accident due to it being the only city, apart from perhaps Birmingham and Manchester that wasn't solely based on geographical advantages that were eventually going to expire... other cities have flourished whilst they've had an advantageous position (Liverpool as a west-coast port running Atlantic shipping operations or Sheffield being in prime place for manufacturing between mining locations, ports and the UK's consumer hub in London, Plymouth as the Royal Navy's home port), but have largely fallen into disuse once those advantages expire... London, especially post-Docks London has only ever relied on giving people a business and culture sandpit to explore, so as long as London is packed with people, it's going to be successful. As our economy has become more service-based it's made sense to a lot of companies to be with everyone else in the South East and London.

I absolutely loved the idea that Davies posited in the show for a Northern super-city centred somewhere around Hebden Bridge encompassing a free-travel/commuter zone swallowing up Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds. It does seem that most of the individual non-London cities have struggled to reach the required "mass" to genuinely compete with London as economic hubs, perhaps the solution is in tying a couple of strategically placed towns/cities into single entities.

Good luck convincing the respective county and city councils to relinquish their individuality though... trying to fuse Lancashire and Yorkshire might make economic sense, but it'd be nearly as difficult to get through than Northern Irish devolution.

[DJoe]

i find the juxtaposition of magmas long post and lovelydivot's one very poignant. almost a snapshot of snh in two posts and no-ones mentioned #lads, brostep or any other gay meme

[titchbit]

garethom - didn't read whole thread, but i thought the urban area pop. of london was smaller, like 5 million? isn't 8 million including metro? i think it would more accurately reflect US numbers if you used urban area pop because for example NY metro is like 19 mill but city is only 8 mill so that would look disproportional as fuck too if you used that number for NY

[garethom]

Yeah, but then we can scale down the Birmingham Area and Greater Manchester to just Birmingham and Manchester, and you're looking at just over a million people in each, so it's still just as bad!

[DJoe]

garethom - didn't read whole thread, but i thought the urban area pop. of london was smaller, like 5 million? isn't 8 million including metro? i think it would more accurately reflect US numbers if you used urban area pop because for example NY metro is like 19 mill but city is only 8 mill so that would look disproportional as fuck too if you used that number for NY

london is 8,300,000
london metropolitan area is 13,600,000

[hubb]

Th US and Germany is not the best examples tbf. In that we usually equate states with countries. With Germany it's such a huge country in comparison, where the districts have the same differences between them traditionally, as England would with Scotland or even Ireland.

In England the size of the capital is determined by other more common traditions of trading and maintaining a notion of an empire for a longer time etc, but not by actual wars as such.

Just a thought.

[kay]

In terms of tech companies, the only ones that can afford to establish themselves in London now are typically small-scale operations. Which generally means IT, software or connectivity-related or completely new start-ups still finding their feet/funding. As soon as they need to grow, they have a tendency to move out of London, usually in the Cambridge direction.

The concentration of tech start-ups in the Cambridge area is one of the highest, if not the highest, in the world. There's a big flow of people into Cambridge but the lack of housing is possibly even worse than in London.

There is a huge amount of tech knowhow in the Manchester-Leeds-Liverpool belt and I think the area looks increasingly more attractive to businesses and potential employees because:
a) It's still relatively/stupidly cheap compared to the south.
b) Years of regeneration are starting to pay off - it doesn't look like the south's idea of th dreary north any more.
c) There is some world-class tech being developed in the region and it isn't biomedically oriented unlike what is happening in London.

There's definitely room for growth outside of London, and I think the renewed interest in promoting manufacturing will help this a lot. The main thing is to avoid shortsighted focusing solely on low-paid manufacturing jobs like in previous manufacturing booms, but to use the new influx of cash to start skilling up the general populace and further improving the infrastructure alongside. The north needs to diversify its offerings to make it more resilient against the whims of economic havoc.