|
|
| City Guide - London - City Overview | ||
|
||
|
City Overview Forget convenient labels like 'Cool Britannia' and the 'Millennium City', London is far more than any neat term can encapsulate: a living, breathing metropolis whose influence resonates around the globe. It is a city laced with layer upon layer of intoxicating history, which began as the Romans set up camp along the River Thames. This meandering waterway became the lifeblood of the London that emerged over the next two millennia. Despite devastating plagues, a near fatal fire and the worst ravages of Nazi bombers during World War II, London became the epicentre of the world's largest ever maritime empire, and later metamorphosed into the economic powerhouse of the United Kingdom. London today is a modern European hub, replete with sharp-suited executives, a high-tech financial 'City' and gleaming skyscrapers. London may still be the famed ramble of villages it romantically claims to be, but it is also very much a twenty-first-century metropolis. The sheer scale of Greater London can be daunting at first, sprawling 1500 sq kilometres (580 sq miles) out across a voluminous plain, swallowing villages and towns as it goes, with a population of around seven million inhabitants. Trying to generalise and categorise its people is as impossible as pigeonholing the city itself. Cosmopolitan is an understatement to describe a polyglot population with 37 distinct immigrant groups each of more than 10,000 people. London's importance to the United Kingdom cannot be overstated. Despite recent devolution for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, London is still the hub of British business, political and financial life, the seat of government, the home of the royal family and also the city where the majority of tourists arrive to spend most of their time and money. In the last decade, London has become an ever more attractive proposition for tourists, especially as the stagnant restaurant scene has been given a shot in the arm by the emergence of confident British, rather than continental, chefs who have created the phenomenon of 'Modern British Cooking'. Simultaneously, the drudge of 1980s wine bars has been usurped by trendy style-bars and pre-club haunts and the nightclub scene has burgeoned. This year UK, or speed, garage has become the sound of the capital as well as influencing dancefloors around the globe. Today, London is asserting itself in numerous ways, not least by electing a feisty, independent mayor, Ken Livingstone, against the express wishes of Tony Blair and his Labour government colleagues. Whatever the successes and failures of Livingstone's reign, there is unlikely to be any stopping a city whose emerging skyline is envisaged to one day match the likes of Manhattan, especially if plans to build Europe's highest tower, nicknamed the 'Gherkin', go ahead. Simultaneously, all along the oft-neglected River Thames, where London's remarkable story began, a multitude of tourist and business developments are springing up. The days when the River Thames was the lifeblood of the city are returning, adding yet another intriguing chapter to a city that has always refused to be categorised or pinned down by anyone. |
||
