Crystal-covered Mercedes turns heads in Knightsbridge. Demotix/Velar Grant. All rights reserved.The short version is that we want to live in a city that's a livable place to work, where we can raise our family, and where we can run our respective small businesses. But London is a city whose two priorities are being a playground for corrupt global elites who turn neighbourhoods into soulless collections of empty safe-deposit boxes in the sky, and encouraging the feckless criminality of the finance industry. These two facts are not unrelated.
My office rent has doubled this decade. We live in 600 square feet, up six flights of stairs, and can't possibly afford anything even remotely larger. The last time someone told us what our place was worth, I called him a liar. Then he showed me the paperwork; it's worth as much as it is because someone can tear it down, along with all the other small flats in our neighbourhoods, and replace them with luxury flats.
I've lived in lots of cities that were going through bubbles. Hell, I lived in San Francisco in the late 1990s. But this is different: the bubble here isn't because people are doing (allegedly) exciting things in the city's environs. The bubble here is driven by the place itself. Every single place where people do stuff, or live, is being torn down, to make room for chains and luxury blocks—and nothing much else.
