Quote:
Originally Posted by rgarri4
The city of London seems to lack a city center. Or if it has one its really hard to tell. Development seems so scattered around and un-aware of each other. I haven't been to London before so I wouldn't know if this is a good or bad thing but seeing it in pictures it's super confusing to tell how the city is growing.
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The misleading thing is the city centre is not marked out by the highrises. It's a tale of two cities.
It's basically a vast centre with two rival political entities - The City of Westminster (lowrise - commerce and cultural, home of the Queen) and The City of London aka The Square Mile (highrise- financial, the Queen needs permission to enter, entirely different authority, police etc to the rest of the city). The former is the nondescript lowrise area that leads up to the big parks and beyond in the background, where the shopping, entertainment, institutions, museums, palaces and royalty are based, which has long commanded the highest business rents in the world. Meanwhile the area of skyscrapers in the foreground is part of the City of London (note the capital C), which is the premier financial district grafted over the oldest part of the metropolis.
Westminster/ West End is marked out in red, considered the true heart of London. Everything in the foreground that leads up to it is 'just' part of the ancient money-making centre that is the City of London. Many people don't consider it the heart despite how it powers the economy, as the 570,000 per sq mile density falls into a veritable ghost town of 3,000 (very gilded) individuals at night. However watch this space, the authorities that long kept it a lean, mean money-making machine uncluttered with residential concerns are now making it a cultural destination:
the lowrise heart in reality looks like this. When people think of London this is where they'll visit:
