[throwaway_12351]

Don't worry much about Brexit, I was quite worried about it myself and I lost the chance to buy a house at a cheaper price. Brexit is turning out to be quite positive for the UK, and the media claims that the companies will move out is backfiring and they are moving into the UK now.

I have lived in SF / Boston / London / Portland, and I think London has the bits of all. Comparing to the west coast, London has equal or better food culture, similar political vibe but much more diverse yet localized within the city, the hustle and bustle of living in a true city, the architectural beauty and most importantly quite nicely located with accessible sites of natural beauty within the UK and Europe.

I think the only thing that is negative about London vs SF is the weather :-/ Also, it's not a very friendly place to move at the start of your career, quite closed for newbies and an old boys club so that's a caveat.

[disgruntledphd2]

OK, so the only part I'll respond to is the Brexit thing.

Firstly, Brexit has still not happened in any real sense (there's a transition period till the end of the year).

Secondly, the UK government appear to want a minimal trade relationship with the EU, which will hit services trade pretty hard (and the UK exports lots of services).

The likelihood is that many large companies will need to move staff/assets to the EU to retain their licenses.

For me, specifically (as I'm a data scientist) this probably means that data products out of the UK are going to be tricky to sell.

I would expect that there will be a drop in London property prices, but a larger drop in jobs.

Don't get me wrong, London is a great city, but I (personally) would stay away from moving there till at least next year, as the implications around Brexit and trade should be much clearer by then.

[throwaway_12351]

I don't even have any counter arguments to make, you can speculate as much as you want, the home prices were suppose to drop drastically and I was waiting for it. They went up after the withdrawal agreement was signed :-/

I was under impression that whatever you just mentioned would have happened by now, but Nissan and Unilever are now moving to UK and all the speculations are going down the drain.

I have come to a conclusion that all the anti-brexit hysteria has been priced in, and indecisiveness is proving more costly as time goes by!

[vmception]

I would trust this comparison more if it was NYC / Hong Kong / London etc

But yeah I like Europe-area economic and financial centers for proximity to the rest of Europe and they are all centrally located in a diagonal line from London to Dubai.

I wish the US had a similar centrally located clusters, instead of the coasts at the far extremes of the continent.

[throwaway_12351]

oh dear, that was a bad rub in :P Yes, SF is always weird and complex to compare to other cities :-/