
Data maps that sum up London - fredley
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29915801
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monk_e_boy
It's so weird to think people live in London. That they get up in the morning
and look around and think 'this is my home'... London (and New York) are
almost as real as Hobbiton in my mind. You must wake up and see people, walk
out the door and see people, walk and walk and walk and see people everywhere
you go. Do they all just blend into the background? How do you live with so
many lives intersecting with yours? Some days I go to <location> and it is
busy with people. Having fun, dogs barking, kids shouting. So I think, "You
know what, I'll come back later. When there's no one here."

~~~
bollix
I lived in London for a year. It was the most lonely isolated place I've
lived. Also it's not really part of the UK anymore. It's a "world" city -
which makes the feeling of loneliness even worse.

~~~
muyuu
Yeah well, that's pretty much all big cities when you arrive on your own,
especially after student age. It's also very expensive to move around, and at
this it's one of the worst places.

~~~
Symbiote
London is cheaper to move around by public transport than many other British
cities.

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.

~~~
muyuu
There may be worse places in the UK, I honestly haven't compared that much
with medium-sized cities like Manchester or Birmingham.

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...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/04/most_expensive_train_trip/)

~~~
Symbiote
The example is stupid and sensationalist, those stations are the two closest
at 260 metres apart, or about two train lengths.

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.

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fractalsea
Compared to the maps of living-area-by-race in the US [1], it seems like there
is much less segregation between black and white people in London. I wonder
why this is the case? Also, I wonder why there is still heavy segregation in
regards to the Asian populations in London.

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...](http://www.wired.com/2013/08/how-segregated-is-your-city-this-eye-
opening-map-shows-you/#slideid-210281)

~~~
hcho
The social housing policies in the UK deliberately tried to tackle social
segregation. You would see council blocks 2 streets away in the poshest of the
areas.

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.

~~~
fractalsea
Interesting. That is probably the reason why ex-councel houses are rented out
for so much money after they are bought from the council. They are often in
very desirable areas.

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.

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ajeet_dhaliwal
I live and work in London. I was born and grew up here but lived away for a
while too. It's a great city but for anyone wanting to do something
entrepreneurial it's not possible to live too cheaply and so quitting a job to
focus on a start up is difficult unless you already have funds or support.

~~~
k-mcgrady
As a recent transplant to London I was surprised at how 'cheap' it is.
Obviously it's more expensive that other places but not prohibitively. I'm
living in a decent flat share in Zone 2 and with rent, food, and travel
to/from work each day it's costing about £1000 per month. Working from home
working on a startup I could shave about £250 from that. And my living
conditions are much, much better than some of the people I've read about on HN
trying to get a startup off the ground in SF living off noodles and sharing a
room with several people.

~~~
notahacker
Depends on the lifestyle you're looking to lead. If a rented room in a shared
house is adequate for your needs then the annual premium you're paying for
that room to be in central London is probably less than the cost of an annual
train ticket from outside London, or the lower salary you'd expect in a
different city. If you're a young family, on the other hand then you could
_buy the freehold_ of a three bed house somewhere like Burnley for little more
than the _annual rental_ of a similarly unremarkable small house or flat in a
not-especially-fashionable Zone 2 suburb. You'd just then have to cope with
living in Burnley :-)

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.

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guard-of-terra
"What passport do you hold" seems to deny the existence of post-soviet states
and Russia. Are they tucked under "other european"? Same for tweets maps.

~~~
gambiting
Well, Turkey is included in Europe even though most of it is in Asia, so
Russia should be included under Europe too. Unless the number is so
insignificant that it's just bundled with "Other Europe".

~~~
oblio
Well, Lithuania is listed directly, Estonia and Latvia are probably in "Other
EU New Members", Ukraine, Russia and Belarus are probably in "Other Europe",
Kazakhstan & co are probably in "Central Asia".

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).

~~~
DanBC
[http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census-
analysis/so...](http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census-
analysis/social-and-economic-characteristics-by-length-of-residence-of-
migrant-populations-in-england-and-wales/characteristics-by-length-of-
residence-of-migrant-populations.html)

You can get the data directly from here.

~~~
oblio
To be honest in those Excel files they provide I don't see more info. I mean
there's no breakdown by country except for something like the top 10
countries. But I don't see Romania or Russia (for example) in them.

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custardcream
Useless page. The mobile version does a poor job of compressing the images
resulting in the data labels being unreadable.

Bring on SVG for this sort of stuff.

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dmacedo
Moved to London this past January; still have so much to get to know in the
city, I find these fascinating! ;)

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barking
In my experience there is very little sense of community in London.

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.

~~~
bollix
I don't know why you're being downvoted. It's true. If you want community,
don't live in a city. Live in a small town or village where everyone knows
everyone else.

~~~
vidarh
There are plenty of smaller towns with a sense of community in London. It's
mainly the centre that is a sterile wasteland.

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kitd
Distribution by marital status is interesting. I always thought it was a bit
of a stereotype, young-trendies near the city centre, happily-marrieds out in
the 'burbs. All borne out by the data though.

~~~
muyuu
For anything with 2+ bedrooms, 95% of the people are priced out of zones 1-2.

