DEGROWTH, FROM THE EAST END TO THE CITY OF LONDON

Today, The Winsors and The Grandma have visited the East End of London and the City of London, an area that has suffered a big urban transformation from a worker borough to a finantial one. The family wants to do some investments in London.

Before the visit, the family has studied some English grammar with Shall, and they have talked about prepositions of transport, and they have talked about We shall overcome an hymn of civil rights.

More information: Shall

More information: 'We Shall Overcome', The Song That Cries Rights

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The East End of London, often referred to within the London area simply as the East End, is the historic core of wider East London, east of the Roman and medieval walls of the City of London and north of the River Thames.

It does not have universally accepted boundaries on its northern and eastern sides, though the River Lea is sometimes seen as the easternmost boundary. Parts of it may be regarded as lying within Central London (though that term too has no precise definition). The term East of Aldgate Pump is sometimes used as a synonym for the area.

The East End began to emerge in the Middle Ages with initially slow urban growth outside the eastern walls, which later accelerated, especially in the 19th century, to absorb pre-existing settlements. The first known written record of the East End as a distinct entity, as opposed to its component parts, comes from John Strype's 1720 Survey of London, which describes London as consisting of four parts: the City of London, Westminster, Southwark, and That Part beyond the Tower.

The relevance of Strype's reference to the Tower was more than geographical. The East End was the urbanised part of an administrative area called the Tower Division, which had owed military service to the Tower of London since time immemorial. Later, as London grew further, the fully urbanised Tower Division became a byword for wider East London, before East London grew further still, east of the River Lea and into Essex.

The area was notorious for its deep poverty, overcrowding and associated social problems. This led to the East End's history of intense political activism and association with some of the country's most influential social reformers. Another major theme of East End history has been migration, both inward and outward. The area had a strong pull on the rural poor from other parts of England, and attracted waves of migration from further afield, notably Huguenot refugees, Irish weavers, Ashkenazi Jews, and, in the 20th century, Bengalis.

The closure of the last of the Port of London's East End docks in 1980 created further challenges and led to attempts at regeneration, with Canary Wharf and the Olympic Park among the most successful examples. Paradoxically, while some parts of the East End are undergoing rapid change and are amongst the areas with the highest mean salary in the UK, it also continues to contain some of the worst poverty in Great Britain.

More information: BBC

More information: My London

The City of London, also known as the City, is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the ancient centre, and constitutes, along with Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London and one of the leading financial centres of the world. 

It constituted most of London from its settlement by the Romans in the 1st century AD to the Middle Ages, but the modern area referred to as London has since grown far beyond the City of London boundary. 

The City is now only a small part of the metropolis of Greater London, though it remains a notable part of central London. The City of London is not one of the London boroughs, a status reserved for the other 32 districts (including Greater London's only other city, the City of Westminster). It is also a separate ceremonial county, being an enclave surrounded by the ceremonial county of Greater London, and is the smallest ceremonial county in England.

The City of London is known colloquially as the Square Mile, as it is 2.90 km2 in area. Both the terms the City and the Square Mile are often used as metonyms for the UK's trading and financial services industries, which continue a notable history of being largely based in the City. The name London is now ordinarily used for a far wider area than just the City. 

London most often denotes the sprawling London metropolis, or the 32 Greater London boroughs, in addition to the City of London itself.

The local authority for the City, the City of London Corporation, is unique in the UK and has some unusual responsibilities for a local council, such as being the police authority, and in having responsibilities and ownerships beyond its boundaries.

The corporation is headed by the Lord Mayor of the City of London (an office separate from, and much older than, the Mayor of London). The City is made up of 25 wards, with administration at the historic Guildhall. Other historic sites include St Paul's Cathedral, Royal Exchange, Mansion House, Old Bailey, and Smithfield Market. Although not within the City, the adjacent Tower of London, built to dominate the City, is part of its old defensive perimeter. Beyond the City, the developments of Westminster (and the West End) Eastminster (and the East End) and Southwark, established the early geography of the metropolis. The City has responsibility for five bridges across the Thames: Blackfriars Bridge, Millennium Bridge, Southwark Bridge, London Bridge and Tower Bridge.

The City is a major business and financial centre, with both the Bank of England and the London Stock Exchange based in the City. Throughout the 19th century, the City was the world's primary business centre, and it continues to be a major meeting point for businesses.

London was ranked second (after New York) in the Global Financial Centres Index, published in 2022. The insurance industry is concentrated in the eastern side of the city, around Lloyd's building. Since about the 1980s, a secondary financial district has existed outside the city, at Canary Wharf, 4 km to the east. The legal profession has a major presence in the northern and western sides of the City, especially in the Temple and Chancery Lane areas where the Inns of Court are located, two of which (Inner Temple and Middle Temple) fall within the City of London boundary.

Primarily a business district, the City has a small resident population of 8,583 based on 2021 census figures, but over 500,000 are employed there (as of 2019) and some estimates put the number of workers in the City to be over 1 million.

About three-quarters of the jobs in the City of London are in the financial, professional, and associated business services sectors.

More information: The Global City

  

 I don't suppose I shall ever see 

this horrid London again.

 

Oscar Wilde