I am back in London again to pick up a prize and continue my ongoing comparison of my native city with the one where I live – New York.
As always, when arriving at London Bridge station this morning, I was reminded of T. S. Eliot’s lines from The Wasteland:
Eliot once worked in Lloyds Bank as a clerk. I recall that Sir Jeremy Morse, the former chairman of the bank, had tears in his eyes when he recited those lines from memory in a valedictory speech.
Anyway, this morning they were as true as ever as I pushed through the crowds to board the Jubilee Line. A sign proclaimed that the line service was good but, as Bill Clinton might have said, that depends on the meaning of the word “good”.
In practice, it meant a Tokyo-like crush to get on the train. Having got used to the New York subway, which can be crowded but is generally not crushed, it was striking.
This is not actually a comment on the subject of London infrastructure since it is a lot better than it used to be and the US hardly has much to write home about as far as its transport infrastructure goes (as anyone who has driven the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway recently could tell you).
The point is that there are an awful lot of people from many nations in London. It continues to amaze with its transformation into a global city.
It made me wonder how London will be affected by the now conflicting trends of a secular rise in trade and a cyclical downturn in financial and housing markets. The London boom of the past few years owed a lot to cyclical and secular forces working together.
Maybe in a year or two it will be easier to buy a house and to get on the tube in London. I wonder.
