Commuting
Commuting every day to work is the unavoidable outcome of a city too large and too expensive. The harsh reality of many Londoners and suburbanites is spending hours every day on buses stuck in traffic jams, in the overcrowded tube and on unreliable and expensive trains.
It takes me only 50 minutes from my house to the office, although grabbing a seat in the tube is a matter of luck. I change at Bond Street, and walk from Baker Street to the office. When the terrorist attacks struck London last year, many people were faced either with a night on a very hard park bench, an expensive journey by taxi, or a long walk home. All public transport was suspended immediately.
When standing on the long escalators, I can't help being fascinated by the sheer amount of people that work in London; and by the enormous task undertaken by transport of London of facilitating mobility for so many customers. Imagine: The greater London area alone has an estimated population of about 7.5 million people, while the whole metropolitan area has between 12 and 14 million inhabitants. All in all, around 300 languages are spoken in this area, making London one of the most linguistically diverse cities in the world.
Commuting is unavoidable. The so-called city, or square mile, is the innermost district of London. Roughly one square mile large, it has a resident population of only 7,000. However, during the day, this figure amounts to an estimated working population of 300,000. That's an increase by a factor of 40.
London is the heart of the United Kingdom in any respect. The capital alone produces a fifth of the country's GDP (= Gross Domestic Product). Novelist Joseph Conrad made his alter ego Captain Marlow call London "the sepulchral city". At least, however, Conrad was so kind as to situate the heart of darkness somewhere else.
Did the Romans, who populated Londinium at around AD 43, ever imagine how their settlement could look like two millennia later?
It takes me only 50 minutes from my house to the office, although grabbing a seat in the tube is a matter of luck. I change at Bond Street, and walk from Baker Street to the office. When the terrorist attacks struck London last year, many people were faced either with a night on a very hard park bench, an expensive journey by taxi, or a long walk home. All public transport was suspended immediately.
When standing on the long escalators, I can't help being fascinated by the sheer amount of people that work in London; and by the enormous task undertaken by transport of London of facilitating mobility for so many customers. Imagine: The greater London area alone has an estimated population of about 7.5 million people, while the whole metropolitan area has between 12 and 14 million inhabitants. All in all, around 300 languages are spoken in this area, making London one of the most linguistically diverse cities in the world.
Commuting is unavoidable. The so-called city, or square mile, is the innermost district of London. Roughly one square mile large, it has a resident population of only 7,000. However, during the day, this figure amounts to an estimated working population of 300,000. That's an increase by a factor of 40.
London is the heart of the United Kingdom in any respect. The capital alone produces a fifth of the country's GDP (= Gross Domestic Product). Novelist Joseph Conrad made his alter ego Captain Marlow call London "the sepulchral city". At least, however, Conrad was so kind as to situate the heart of darkness somewhere else.
Did the Romans, who populated Londinium at around AD 43, ever imagine how their settlement could look like two millennia later?
posted by Londinium at 17:18
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