The Rise of London

Just read an interesting article on London and how, while it's always been an important city, as recently as the 1960s it was just one of many important cities: Manchester, Birmingham Liverpool, and Glasgow all had vibrant economies and communities.  However, they were all built on a manufacturing base which, like Detroit, dried up and moved elsewhere, leaving them struggling and London growing disproportionately to all other UK cities. 

Want some statistics to back that up? How about the 2001 census, which shows London has a higher population than the next 18 largest cities *combined*:

Rank	City	Population
1	London	7,172,091
2	Birmingham	970,892
3	Leeds	715,404
4	Glasgow	577,869
5	Sheffield	513,234
6	Bradford	467,665
7	Edinburgh	448,624
8	Liverpool	439,477
9	Manchester	392,819
10	Bristol	380,615
11	Cardiff	305,353
12	Coventry	300,848
13	Leicester	279,921
14	Belfast	276,459
15	Nottingham	266,988
16	Newcastle on Tyne	259,000
17	Kingston upon Hull	243,589
18	Plymouth	240,720

And according to this 2002 report, "Nineteen of the top 20 richest areas in England and Wales are in south-east England" -- in other words, London and the surrounding area.

As usual, I don't have any answers, but given my current search for a house, I noticed that in all the talks of distributing income and improving quality of life, no one has ever suggested limiting home ownership.  Think about it: When people buy to let, they are increasing demand for a limited supply of housing (ie prices go up), and then they turn around and rent it to people who can now no longer afford to buy.  Neither one has pride of ownership, and neither contributes to the community.  It also becomes self-perpetuating as investors look to buy in areas that are appreciating, making those areas more valuable, while making poor areas even less valuable.  Now, I'm not saying this is right (I am a libertarian, after all) or even enforceable (limited liability company, anyone?), but I just think it's interesting I've never even heard anyone question property investment as a sustainable and beneficial activity.