notes.husk.org. scribblings by Paul Mison.

Concentric Londons

There are many concentric definitions of London. This probably isn’t an exhaustive list of the potential boundaries, but let’s give it a go. (For this version, there aren’t any links, nor are there maps. Consider this a work of geography, not cartography.)

Londonium

or, Roman London. Defined by London Wall, the remains of which are still visible. Tiny, but still more or less discernable.

The City Of London

Historic, rich, and a strange sort of local authority, the City is (just over) a mile square (hence its nickname) on the north bank of the Thames (although it maintains four road bridges, and one footbridge). Find its boundaries by looking for griffins on poles.

The Cities of London and Westminster

Combine the old centres, which meet on the Thames, and you have this double-headed beast (and parliamentary consitituency, although excludes the northern part of the Borough of Westminster).

The Inner Ring Road

A selection of numbered roads provides the boundary for the central Congestion Charge area, and one definition of “central London”.

The Civil War Defences

Built in 1642 to defend the Parliamentary capital, 11 miles of wall take in an area from Shoreditch to Hyde Park, and Vauxhall to Rotherhithe.

Zone 1

Transport for London’s central fare boundary, which reaches a bit beyond the ring road. Of course, with nine zones, there are further boundaries outside this one, useful for bragging rights (and saving money on a Travelcard).

071

In 1990, Ofcom broke London’s old 01 telephone code in two, introducing 071. After two more changes, the city now has a single area code, 020, but there’s still plenty of numbers (and people who’ll remove the space) to testify to the old distinction the between “inner” and “outer” codes.

Inner London

Originally defined in the Metropolis Management Act of 1855, finally given a sane system of government in 1889 (as London County Council) and lingering since 1965 as a definition for local government financing, these twelve modern London boroughs (and the City) form a large, but not all-encompassing, core.

Inside the Circulars

The North Circular, a hodge-podge of custom-built dual carriageway and converted streets, and the South Circular, which is barely a trunk road at all, form a ring around a certain definition of the place.

The London Postal District

Taking in eight postcode areas, this area’s been slowly contracting for years. Even bits of TfL’s zone 4 are outside it.

020

The larger, current, telephone code for London, which manages to not match the legislative boundary at all.

The Green Belt

Aimed at ending sprawl after the war, the green belt more or less worked. Its inner boundary stopped London’s expansion (especially in the north-west, where the Tube was once to have been extended.)

Greater London

Defined in 1963, made a council in 1965, and currently the area that elects the London Mayor, eight MEPs, and 25 GLA members. This is the fuzzy shape most Londoners will recognise as a map of their city, I’d say.

The M25

Planned as part of the post-war London Ringway schemes, mangled to fit, and labelled the Road to Hell, the London Orbital - 120 miles long, and roughly 15 miles from the centre - is a usefully physical boundary to the city.

TfL Zone 9

You can get outside the M25 by Tube, even without going to zone 9 (Epping, on the Central Line), but by going into the strange new zones that used to be letters, you can get a long way north-west, into the wilds of Buckinghamshire.

Travel to Work Region

London’s economic impact sprawls well beyond any of these relatively well known (if messy) boundaries. A map drawn to define an area such that it contain 85% of those working within it reaches the Essex coast, nearly to Cambridge, and most of the way to Brighton. Similarly, one that allows up to 25% of people to be commuters draws in districts up to 30 miles away.

After that, London’s influence bleeds away, to be submerged in the rest of the south east.

(This is a response of sorts to Oliver O’Brien’s piece, Where is London?)

Free Parking

Everyone knows - or should know - about the vast gulf in taxes on petrol/gasoline. Petrol in the UK costs about £1.10 a litre at the moment; the fuel excise duty went up by 2p at the beginning of October. That translate to well over $6.50 a gallon; currently the average US gas price is nearer $2.60. The UK isn’t even the most expensive in Europe.

However, there’s another difference that’s less obvious: the costs of parking. I remember (but can’t be bothered to dig for) incredulous comments when the London congestion charge was set up asking whether they were going to charge for parking next. Of course, that generated an equally puzzled response: that’s been done in London since the 1950s.

Indeed, the wholesale turning over of land to the car really didn’t happen as much in Europe, in cities at least. London has some surface car parks, but they tend to be tiny bits of bomb-damaged land, but your car is far more likely to be hidden underneath a park or in a multi-storey building. You’d never get planning permission for the sort of parking lot that’s common even in the centre of otherwise enlightened US cities. Parking has to pay.

Meanwhile, US cities turn over between 10 and 30% of their land to lots, often free, which in turn leads to issues with water runoff, heat islands, and sprawl. All of this parking land is generally free to use, which means there’s no economic reason to curb demand. It all seems baffling to me, but to Americans, it’s just the way things are.

(This post was languishing in my drafts folder, but I’m publishing it as part of a clearout.)

London’s High Line

Kottke on Nine Reasons The High Line Sucks:

He missed James Kunstler’s assertion that the whole thing should have remained a railroad.

In the early years of this decade, I always wanted to try and walk along the disused railway line from Dalston towards Broad Street. The old bridges dominate the eastern end of what was the the Shoreditch one-way triangle, and the arches form a line of spaces parallel to the High Street, and further north, on the other side of Kingsland Road. However, I never bothered spending enough time to figure out how to get onto it, and I was worried the various bridges would never be safe.

I’ve definitely lost my chance now; the northernmost three quarters of the track bed are currently in the last year or so of the work required to convert them back into a railway line, this time under the auspices of London Overground.

Of course, the geographical surroundings are very different; the High Line is in Manhattan (albeit one one edge), compared to the fringes of central London for the Dalston line, and the need for public transport along its route is far less pressing. (The Eighth Avenue / A-C-E line runs parallel to the High Line, two blocks further east, whereas the new East London line will be filling a fairly large gap in the railway map of London.)

All in all, I suspect the two cities have probably come to the right planning conclusion for each line. Still, I regret not walking what was, for twenty years, London’s High Line.