I thought this would be comparing neighborhoods, which is really impossible, but kind of a favorite game of mine. And impossible to avoid for anyone who's moved from one major city to another, particularly as an expat.
For instance, one could say that Shoreditch (London) is kinda-sorta TriBeCa meets Lower East Side meets Williamsburg (NYC). The first bit due to proximity to the financial center (and the luxury apartments this brings), the last due to hipsterdom, but the density of the built environment and the level of grime well exceeds the 'Burg, so it's not just that; there's a dose of LES.
Notting Hill is most like the West Village (lots of London neighborhoods are bound to be most like the West Village, among NY hoods), but a bit more residential and with a bit more recently gentrified edge in the northern part, so that mixed with some part of Brooklyn like Bed-Stuy.
Going the other way, NY's SoHo is like Covent Garden meets Clerkenwell. Midtown is practically all of central London rolled into one, but mostly the City meets Oxford/Regent Streets meets Leicester Square. The Upper East Side is pretty obviously the whole Grosvenor Estate (Mayfair, Belgravia).
You can be lazy (like just calling the most expensive urban zip codes of any city "the Upper East Side of"), but it never quite works because cities develop in such different ways. Still, it's fun to try and moreso if one has spent enough time living in each place to know how residents use various 'hoods.
Perhaps another thread?
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There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." - Isaac Asimov
Last edited by 10023; Dec 21, 2017 at 10:11 AM.
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