View Single Post
  #47  
Old Posted May 16, 2017, 7:59 AM
10023's Avatar
10023 10023 is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: London
Posts: 21,146
Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
Never. And with Brexit, even less likely. The gap, long-term, will widen.

Also, the City of London didn't overtake NYC. Metro London overtook NYC, which is a different, apples to oranges political classification.
No, it's not.

The City of London is an archaic unit that refers to the square mile of the financial district and has less than 10,000 residents. No one talks about the City except as shorthand for financial services (much like 'Wall Street').

The City of London, the City of Westminster and 31 other boroughs make up the city (lower case 'c') of London as a municipal entity. Those London boroughs have less devolved political authority than NYC's five boroughs. There is one mayor for Greater London just as there is one mayor for the five boroughs of NYC. The metropolitan area of London is significantly bigger and extends into the neighboring Home Counties.

Now, what is true is that while London is now more populous than NYC, its metro area will never become larger. London covers about 600 square miles to NYC's roughly 350 square miles, so it is bound to have more people (even though much more of it is given over to parkland and open space). But it also represents a much larger share of the metro area than NYC proper, and NYC is denser.

One of the key differences is that NYC has a big physical barrier (the Hudson River) directly adjacent to its core business districts. If you added another ~250 square miles of New Jersey directly across the river from Manhattan (which would mean Hudson County and about 80% of Bergen County), then NYC would cover the same physical area as London but its population would be about 10 million people.

It is actually quite possible than London will add another 1.5 million or so residents eventually, to have the same population as NYC within 600 square miles. What it will never have is the continuous urban sprawl up 2/3 of the length of Long Island, into northern NJ, and up coastal Connecticut.
__________________
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; May 16, 2017 at 8:10 AM.
Reply With Quote