[mpswardle]

You're completely right about the economy outside London. I'm from London and love it but i can frankly say the UK's biggest problem is having only one genuinely world-stage level successful city.

Look at our productive friends in Germany, they have Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg.

It's not surprising rent is so high when all the good jobs are in one place.

[cm2187]

The problem is rather the combination of:

1. 2-3 floors houses, so low population density

2. narrow, middle-age style streets which means commuting by car is close to impossible

3. public transports already used way over their capacity (it's a small miracle every morning that on over-crowded tube platforms which do not have doors that people do not get pushed / fall on the tracks while the trains are accelerating 10cm away from their face - a miracle only thanks to british commuters being overly calm and courteous).

4. Very restrictive planning permissions which makes it very difficult to build anywhere outside of a few spots, which become covered with sky scapers, and a gvt / local councils determined to keep the real estate bubble going at any cost, including sponsoring 100% LTV loans with tax payer money, instead of allowing new developments.

[arethuza]

Well, as an Edinburgh resident I'm personally mystified as to why anyone would want to live in London! :-)

[NB Of course there are perfectly good reasons for wanting to live in London - just never appealed to me!]

[TheOtherHobbes]

London is a handful of very pleasant millionaire villages - Primrose Hill, Hampstead & Highgate, Ken + Chel etc - surrounded by terraced Edwardian worker slums.

There's also been a new build boom in the East. Some areas were almost affordable for a while.

The big advantage compared to the rest of the UK is networking potential. Even the biggest competing cities - Manchester, Birmingham - are an order of magnitude less happening. And places like Leeds and Swindon have almost nothing at all.

The UK has really screwed the proverbial pooch here. Compared to traditional industry, Internet and creative businesses have huge potential for almost no infrastructure spend, and can create jobs almost everywhere.

Aggressively promoting startups across the country should have been a no-brainer. But... that's not what we got.

[makomk]

The other smaller startup city is Cambridge, which in some ways is even worse - less dense housing and a complete lack of decent transport links in of any kind, because all our transportation centers on London.

[wrong_variable]

As a Londener - London sucks !

Would love to Live in Edinburgh - but the world's laundered money doesn't flow through Edinburgh :(

[arethuza]

Finance seems to be a big employer here - obviously not on the scale of the City but proportionally (Edinburgh isn't that big) it's a fairly high percentage of jobs.

[pjc50]

Yes, although they're "back office" and all the sexy high-paid trading, quant, actuarial stuff is stuck in London.

[arethuza]

Don't think I've ever seen "sexy" and "actuarial" used together :-)

What do all the actuaries do in Edinburgh then - I've seen to have known loads of them over the years! Or is pensions/life stuff not on the "sexy" side of things?

[pjc50]

Good point, there's Sun Alliance etc here. I get the impression that they have the "good" but not "stratospheric" pay rates? i.e £50-£150k.

[ciaranm]

Slightly ironic, isn't it? Edinburgh is basically to Scotland what London is to England - just not quite to the same extreme.

[arethuza]

Maybe politically and financially, but Glasgow (i.e. Greater Glasgow) is much larger than Edinburgh.

[maze-le]

On a smaller scale, you have these problems in germany too. Gentrification has been an (not so small) issue in Berlin since the early 90ies. And no one I know who lives in Berlin (or Hamburg for that matter) is satisfied with their rent-cost to living-quality ratio. A notable counter-example is Leipzig (cheap rent, lots of parks, good quality of living [my opinion]), but things are changing here as well...

[lagadu]

If you think renting in Berlin is expensive, check out Copenhagen. I know a few people living in Berlin, rent is 60-100% more expensive here.

[ptr]

I thought Berlin was known for being very affordable when it comes to housing -- low rents for nice apartments. "Berlin is poor but sexy", which I would think feeds the hipster and start-up cultures.

[hyperbovine]

> Gentrification has been an (not so small) issue in Berlin since the early 90ies.

Yeah, I heard Berlin really changed a lot in the 90s...

[Chris2048]

Maybe Leeds will get bigger? :-)