London is basically an amalgamation of hundreds of towns and villages, some of them well over a thousand years old, into “the Metropolis”.
It makes for an interesting urban/suburban patchwork, but obviously takes a very long time to learn (if one ever does). It’s also actually not super efficient in terms of travel or housing, as it means the city is quite multi-polar and it’s harder to build density near transit (since the stations tend to be in the village/town centers, which of course are historically significant and can’t be torn down for a bunch of towers, so these end up in whatever random brownfield sites they can find).
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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
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