by Ladywood | 2025-04-04 14:09:44+00:00
GB needs to shift some of the overheating in London to it's second cities (Leeds, Manchester etc).

Young, ambitious people in London are doing fantastic in their jobs and bring so much energy into their careers but are increasingly getting nowhere in their personal lives without help from bank of mum and dad. For many I know, it's driving increased rates of burnout and most are simply checking out of the country for the likes of Dubai/Singapore et al. because they see no desirable alternative.

Those that continue to grind on in London have to choose one of the tradeoffs between getting a home within an hour of their work, getting married or starting a family. To do any of these means drastically cutting back your expenditure, and as a result local independents/ pubs etc start to close down and get replaced by your clone town shops. Planning, gentrification and other reasons also contribute to all of this, but it means grassroots in the country are just getting stamped out and it makes it hard to ever really imagine a 'garage startup' in a cheap part of town being a realistic image.

The problem is though, that because a vast majority of the jobs, institutions and national infrastructure revolves around London, it's hard for any other cities to rise up to provide an alternative. So you get graduates who are ambitious flocking to the city, which attracts their friends and their friends friends. This overflowing workforce attracts more companies, more industries more investment. It creates an unbreakable cycle.

Ultimately the only constraint that faces any city growing like this is physical space. Once that runs out you get all of the negative externalities which are driving productivity. Dislocation of community, 1hr+ commutes wasting 10hrs a week of your most productive populations time, price spikes, increased crime, loss of identity, community and culture, the commercialisation and financialisation of everything and the feeling of everything is at breaking point everyday.

It's a troublesome place to be in. Your creatives and engineers don't have the physical space to tinker with things or to mend stuff, and to hire the space is extremely cost prohibitive. So they end up getting jobs in design agencies or investment banks. They aren't really dealing with physical things anymore and you start to lose sparks of innovation or inspiration. Everyone gets stuck in these bubbles and it impacts the rest of the country.

It's a massive shame, because a good life can be found elsewhere in the UK. Those I know in Manchester earn a combined income of £70-80k, own a 4 bed semi-detached (£350k) in an increasingly popular part of the city. They have a garden and a garage where they tinker with ideas. They learned how to use tools whilst renovating their property. They know their neighbours. They get to the national parks and swim in waterfalls within an hour of their home. Their friends live in adjacent streets and mend cars, join local community groups, share an allotment etc. I'm sort of rambling, but what I'm trying to say is the lack of pressure and the space to breathe is giving them access to experiences and opportunities that a London 5 year qualified grad earning 100k living in a 2 bed high rise flat couldn't even fathom (yet would benefit immensely from). In fact they probably pay £££ to do some basic household tasks in a controlled environment, but it's packaged up as a boozy [insert skill like painting] social event.

What actually needs to happen?

- We need to get our most energetic, creative and inspired people into some of the emerging areas across the UK regions. We need to de-stigmatise 'not moving to London does not mean you're a failure'. We need to drive cultural change through stories, film, music etc to help people imagine what a life elsewhere might feel like. To give them the confidence to revitalise areas in the UK. This will make the move more desirable.

- We need to fundamentally get more jobs and opportunities into our second cities. This will make the move more financially viable.

- To get more jobs into cities, we need to boost populations within 30-45 minutes of the CBD so companies can actually hire for the roles they need. To do that you need to invest in intra-city transport (trams/metros, cycle lanes, bus systems). You could also lean into hybrid more, build HS2 in full, so people can live in the North and go to the office in London twice a week within 1hr 30. You also need to regenerate old mill land thats derelict in the inner city areas, build easy to rent affordable flats so people can move to a city easier and get their bearings before buying. Make it more feasible.

We basically need to realise that the country is nearly 70m people, and to rely on/ only invest in just 8m in the London region to pick up the weight is always going to end badly. I truly believe London is now overheated, and the Richard Florida theory of agglomeration effects is probably now getting diminishing returns.

Tom Forth gets closer to the structural reasons in here: https://tomforth.co.uk/whynorthenglandispoor/

The best way to get young ambitious people to give a shit about the UK again is to make them feel like they have a stake in society. That's becoming more impossible everyday in London due to house prices (the traditional route). Get them into our next cities, founding start ups with less risk (lower costs) or joining local grad schemes with fresh energy, combined with investment into transport, get those cities productivity up and I promise Britain will turn a corner in a decade.