Wednesday, May 06, 2009
Are London's days numbered?
Telegraph: City in danger of falling victim to EU wiles and becoming another Antwerp
The City of London is on borrowed time. Great banking centres can prosper for 40 years or so after the host country has lost industrial leadership but then some shock or political upset exposes the fragility of it all. "There is an extreme stickiness in financial centres," writes Peter Spufford, a Cambridge historian, reviewing the rise and fall of Genoa, Florence, Venice, Bruges, Antwerp, Amsterdam and London over eight centuries. Antwerp's arcaded "Beurs" was Europe's commercial hub in the 1550s. Within half a century Antwerps' population had fallen from 100,000 to 40,000. It was hard to sell a house.
Posted by drewster @ 01:09 AM (391 views) Add Comment
4 Comments
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1. Missedtheboat said...
I love Ambrose - always so alarmist.
I can tell it's his article just by the title.
It's always some tidbit represented in the most horrifyingly negative way. For a bear, even I'm having difficulty taking him seriously any more.
2. doomwatch said...
London and the South East in general have become increasingly 2 tier and over-crowded, full of traffic, queues for just about everything
and now far too reliant on the "financial services" industry.
Before I'm accused of been some chippy "provincial", I've lived and worked in London for over 12 years and witnessed this
horrible transformation, so I feel well placed to comment.
3. debtfree said...
agree with doomwatch, we left london a couple of years ago. most parts are now 3rd world living standards, you walk down some high streets and you could be anywhere in the world. it's only the wealthy areas that have any resemblence to the old classic london.
4. sneaker said...
@doomwatch
Well said. I've been a Londonder since the mid-70's and remember a less frantic time. It all became very rich and show-offy, far more than the 80's, but now these sad individuals are all leaving. Remember when the Chelsea FC crowd used not to be all hedge fund managers and oligarchs? London was a perfectly decent place even in the depths of all the gloom of the early-to-mid 80's. Creatively, it was never more alive.