this is the thing. Right until the mid noughties you could. The rich and poor were mixed since Victorian times, as swanky new developments were plonked in salubrious areas to increase their cachet (and asking price). By the 20th Century as the city fell on hard times, and the rich began moving to the suburbs, the rich mansion blocks began to subdivide up into more profitable bedsits. Former regency areas such as Notting Hill, Marylebone and Paddington became slums, housing multiple families in each mansion terrace house. 1/8 of the city fell derelict as the docks closed and industry died - if anything the classes began to divide. However by the 1990s things began looking up - the councils banned gated developments and made it prerequisite to have 30-50% of new developments, even upmarket ones, devoted to affordable housing. Meanwhile the creatives and hipsters began moving in, colonising tower blocks and mixing working and middle classes more. All throughout this time one could still get council housing and cheap rooms, and cheap business rents (read: cheap, hip nightlife) right in the centre - notably Soho, Clerkenwell, Farringdon, Victoria, Holborn, Islington, Hoxton that took on a buzz like no other (areas, some of which became the most expensive land in the world a decade later). This marked the boom years of the city as it took back it's limelight, and it's 'cool' (very similar to Berlin a decade later, whose Ossies abandoned their city centre homes to move West, and the city soon bankrupted also - drawing in artists, creatives, culture and nightlife from far and wide, due to its affordability and huge amount of emptied properties ripe for colonisation).
Fast forward to the late noughties, with prices rising across the board, and the new centre-right mayor abandoning the affordability clause in new housing. Now one has to trek out to zone 3 or 4 for any interesting nightlife - the once legendary crowds of 500,000 to 1 million every night of the week in the Soho-TCM triangle that made it the world's largest nightlife district now gone. And if you earn less than $45K a year you do that trek too to live. It's a popular saying that if you can afford to walk to work, have a dog, a garden or a car, youre living a millionaires lifestyle.
I'm sure this is in line with other major cities, but for London it's a sad break from a 200 year old tradition. There is no longer a single property anywhere in the entire city (suburbs included) that will sell for less than $170,000, even as a single room dormitory/ studio. The average house price is now $770,000 (though finally showing signs of cooling). In short not even the middle classes can afford to buy, only rent.
To show the scale of the bubble - average house prices have gone up by $170,000 in a decade, but the average wage by $11,000. One needs to earn $70,000 a year to buy, and to do it in a couple.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/n...y-experts.html
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Héhéhé. I hope this whole projected thing becomes real enough to kick some butts over here... It's quite incredibly huge.
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