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robtherobber | 3 days ago

That's an interesting take, which contradicts what I know. I'd be interested in reading some specialist literature on that.

discuss

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lotsofpulp|3 days ago

The biggest subsidy is the supply of people, although these days much of those come from outside of the UK rather than other regions in the UK. Other places (and people in those places) bear the cost of making and raising the new people, and London (and other metros) gain the productivity from those new people.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/dvc2872/fig03/index.ht...

nephihaha|3 days ago

The biggest subsidy is the presence of government/civil service and royal "machinery", which ensures a steady flow of public money into the area before we even look at the vast amounts spent on London's infrastructure.

Much of British transport infrastructure is also designed to feed people into London (although London is less bad for that than Paris which is the hub of nearly all the French rail network.) The Channel Tunnel certainly does. Even the motorway and rail networks of Wales do to some extent.

nephihaha|3 days ago

Government and civil service departments are mostly based in and around London, as is most BBC infrastructure/HQ.

London has umpteen infrastructure updates whether motorways or underground lines. Also vanity projects such as the Garden Bridge which cost tens of millions without ever being built, or the Wembley Stadium refit which cost than the Scottish Parliament building (but garnered a fraction of the negative press.)

array_key_first|3 days ago

I believe London is one of the only parts of the UK that generates more tax revenue than it uses.

In general, denser cities are more efficient in very measure. It makes sense, you have the same amount of stuff with less space and less materials.

Basically everywhere the way it works is that the non-cities are on perpetual welfare from the cities because the cities have all the economy, but you still have to run miles of roads and sewage into the non-cities.