Why Greater London is the "city proper"

[10023]

Originally Posted by JManc

Until seeing that map...never realize how close Brighton & Hove was to London. Train ride seemed longer.

Did you take the Gatwick Express or something else? That takes under an hour from Victoria.

Gatwick Airport is actually closer to Brighton than Central London

But that actually makes a good point about why commuter numbers aren't everything (even though the top half of that list shows some pretty significant percentages). Crawley (Gatwick) and Luton have commuter shares under 10%, but these places are home to two of London's airports. In Crawley's case, one of its major ones. There is no way that a town actually containing a city's international airport would not be considered a "suburb" in the US. Or are we to believe that London Gatwick Airport is not within the London metro area?

[Jonesy55]

And one reason why the commuter share is fairly low in those places is probably that the airport and related businesses are the major employers locally.

[Jonesy55]

Originally Posted by JManc

Until seeing that map...never realize how close Brighton & Hove was to London. Train ride seemed longer.

If it was the Southern Rail service then the two cancellations plus 90 minutes delay probably made it seem longer!

[JManc]

I left out of Victoria but don't remember which line. There was some delay leaving London though.

[Pretext]

Everytime I think of Middlesex, I think of the John Betjeman poem.

http://www.johnbetjeman.com/middlesex.html

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Jonesy55

This is the list of districts outside of London with the highest proportion of workers commuting in according to the 2011 census, I guess the figures might be slightly higher now.

Very helpful. I calculated a few counties:

Commute to Greater London:

Surrey 31.7%
Hertfordshire 26%
Essex 21.4%
Kent* 18.2%
Buckinghamshire 17.2%

* excluding Dover and Thanet.

[muppet]

Bear in mind to be considered a US style CSA, you dont even have to commute into the city proper, just into the next county along.

[10023]

Originally Posted by JManc

I left out of Victoria but don't remember which line. There was some delay leaving London though.

Gotcha. There are express trains to Gatwick (which then go on to Brighton), and there are local trains that make a bunch of stops. I've taken the wrong one before. And yes, frequent delays mean that the theoretically 30-minute express train to Gatwick usually takes 35-40 minutes.

Still, it's much faster than getting to JFK...

[Docere]

Originally Posted by muppet

Bear in mind to be considered a US style CSA, you dont even have to commute into the city proper, just into the next county along.

Yes, and I'm sure a few Home Counties would be "central counties" using US MSA criteria.

[dc_denizen]

Who care about MSA. What matters is urban area.

New Yorks urban area contains 19 million people. London, around 12 million.

This is based on contiguous built up urban areas above a certain density threshold, not commute share to far flung rural areas.

[xzmattzx]

I'm having trouble understanding London/Greater London from an American standpoint. Obviously, I know that it should be viewed from a British standpoint, but being from the US, my default setting is the way American things are done. Canada has a lot of similarities with the US, so I can understand the Canadian way of doing things based on my knowledge of US subdivisions.

The City of London merged with the county to create the City of Greater London, correct?

Are all the boroughs in London like boroughs in New York City? For instance, Brooklyn and Queens are part of New York City, but are separate boroughs from the original of Manhattan? The City of London is the original borough?

Is Greater London a city, a county, both, or neither? For instance, New York City is a city and is also actually 5 counties, each county being one of the boroughs. Or, Philadelphia is a city that happens to be the entirety of Philadelphia County. Both are technically separate, but are really the same anyway. (An example of not quite completely overlapping is Indianapolis, which is the entirety of Marion County, except for Speedway, Beech Grove, etc.) Or, Baltimore is an independent city, not a part of any county, including a completely overlapping county?

Was the amalgamation of 1965 similar to the amalgamation of Toronto in 1998 which made all the regional municipalities (Toronto, York, Scarborough, etc) part of the City of Toronto?

[JManc]

I think the boroughs in London have a lot more authority on a local level than boroughs do in NYC which do have some authority but not nearly as much as the city. I could be wrong...10023? The 5 counties in NYC are basically separate DA's offices and criminal courts. That's about it.

[muppet]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

Who care about MSA. What matters is urban area.

New Yorks urban area contains 19 million people. London, around 12 million.

This is based on contiguous built up urban areas above a certain density threshold, not commute share to far flung rural areas.

Sure, but stick to contiguous, don't mention density - as most of England would thus qualify as CSA (the country fits in 50 million people into an area the size of Maine). Much of the countryside is denser than the NYC suburbs.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by 10023

Gotcha. There are express trains to Gatwick (which then go on to Brighton), and there are local trains that make a bunch of stops. I've taken the wrong one before. And yes, frequent delays mean that the theoretically 30-minute express train to Gatwick usually takes 35-40 minutes.

Still, it's much faster than getting to JFK...

i'll say.

and its further away too, than say times square to jfk.

but really heathrow is more ny's jfk.

[10023]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

Who care about MSA. What matters is urban area.

New Yorks urban area contains 19 million people. London, around 12 million.

This is based on contiguous built up urban areas above a certain density threshold, not commute share to far flung rural areas.

"Contiguous built up area" is a poor standard to use for London, and Europe in general, because of green belts and a much more developed rail infrastructure.

If you stuck a half-mile wide band of farmland along the Queens/Nassau border (approximately where the Cross Island Expressway is now), you wouldn't make places like Hempstead any less part of NY's metro area.

All that mess of West Berkshire cities and towns (Slough, Maidenhead, Bracknell, Aldershot, Farnborough, Woking, etc) is metro London using the US definition, there are just gaps of green space because they are mandated by law.

That's a population of about 14 million. Still meaningfully smaller than NYC's metro area, but only by about a third, rather than half.

[10023]

Originally Posted by JManc

I think the boroughs in London have a lot more authority on a local level than boroughs do in NYC which do have some authority but not nearly as much as the city. I could be wrong...10023? The 5 counties in NYC are basically separate DA's offices and criminal courts. That's about it.

I'm not an expert on what boroughs are responsible for in NYC, or really the full extent of what London boroughs do either.

I know that I pay my council tax to the borough (this is a pretty modest amount that pays for things like trash collection), and that I have to contact them to set up Christmas tree removal. I went to the borough's offices to get my marriage license. Planning, transportation, and policing are all done at the Greater London level.

Also, if this is any kind of clue, people tend to be very focused on elections for London's mayor, and it's a very high profile position (to the point that Trump got into a Twitter fight with him), whereas I couldn't tell you the name of the person in charge of my borough (or their official title).

[10023]

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

I'm having trouble understanding London/Greater London from an American standpoint. Obviously, I know that it should be viewed from a British standpoint, but being from the US, my default setting is the way American things are done. Canada has a lot of similarities with the US, so I can understand the Canadian way of doing things based on my knowledge of US subdivisions.

The City of London merged with the county to create the City of Greater London, correct?

Are all the boroughs in London like boroughs in New York City? For instance, Brooklyn and Queens are part of New York City, but are separate boroughs from the original of Manhattan? The City of London is the original borough?

Is Greater London a city, a county, both, or neither? For instance, New York City is a city and is also actually 5 counties, each county being one of the boroughs. Or, Philadelphia is a city that happens to be the entirety of Philadelphia County. Both are technically separate, but are really the same anyway. (An example of not quite completely overlapping is Indianapolis, which is the entirety of Marion County, except for Speedway, Beech Grove, etc.) Or, Baltimore is an independent city, not a part of any county, including a completely overlapping county?

Was the amalgamation of 1965 similar to the amalgamation of Toronto in 1998 which made all the regional municipalities (Toronto, York, Scarborough, etc) part of the City of Toronto?

The City of London is tiny, basically just the old walled city founded by the Romans. It's like NY's financial district, and has about 8,000 residents. As a tourist, it's quite possible that you don't even visit the City of London, except to see St Paul's or the Tower of London, which are at its western and eastern extremities.

The 1965 amalgamation combined the County of London (which was much bigger than the City of London) with some of the surrounding counties, which had been part of metropolitan London since Victorian times, to create Greater London.

As you'd imagine, the metro area has expanded and sprawled quite a bit since the mid-1960s, and so the circle they chose to draw then no longee encompasses all of London's metro area.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

Was the amalgamation of 1965 similar to the amalgamation of Toronto in 1998 which made all the regional municipalities (Toronto, York, Scarborough, etc) part of the City of Toronto?

More akin to the creation of Metro Toronto in 1954 (dissolved in the 1998 amalgamation), whereby you had six municipalities who were responsible for administering certain services like sanitation, parks, building permits, zoning, licensing, and so on - generally low-level, localized concerns. Meanwhile the overarching Metro government managed unified services like police, transportation, education, and public housing across all 6 municipalities.

One would vote for both their municipal mayor & local councillor, as well as the Metro Chairman; and property taxes would go to both jurisdictions. Post-1998, the former municipalities really only exist in name only.

The exact breakdown of services in between London's boroughs and the Greater London Authority might differ somewhat from (for example, public housing is administered by borough councils), but it generally has the same mix of local concerns being handled by the boroughs and regional-level stuff by the GLA.

[JManc]

Why did Toronto amalgamate? Was the idea of Montreal being the biggest city in Canada too much to bear?

[Docere]

Originally Posted by JManc

Why did Toronto amalgamate? Was the idea of Montreal being the biggest city in Canada too much to bear?

Toronto was basically one city with a borough system since 1954. Most of the big responsibilities were handled by the metropolitan government.