London, city, capital of the United Kingdom. It is among the oldest of the world’s great cities-its history spanning nearly two millennia-and one of the most cosmopolitan. By far Britain’s largest metropolis, it is also the country’s economic, transportation, and cultural centre.
London is situated in southeastern England, lying astride the River Thames some 50 miles (80 km) upstream from its estuary on the North Sea. In satellite photographs the metropolis can be seen to sit compactly in a Green Belt of open land, with its principal ring highway (the M25 motorway) threaded around it at a radius of about 20 miles (30 km) from the city centre. The growth of the built-up area was halted by strict town planning controls in the mid-1950s. Its physical limits more or less correspond to the administrative and statistical boundaries separating the metropolitan county of Greater London from the “home counties” of Kent, Surrey, and Berkshire (in clockwise order) to the south of the river and Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, and Essex to the north. The historic counties of Kent, Hertfordshire, and Essex extend in area beyond the current administrative counties with the same names to include substantial parts of the metropolitan county of Greater London, which was formed in 1965. Most of Greater London south of the Thames belongs to the historic county of Surrey, while most of Greater London north of the Thames belongs historically to the county of Middlesex. Area Greater London, 607 square miles (1,572 square km). Pop. (2001) Greater London, 7,172,091; (2011 prelim.) Greater London, 8,173,941.
Historically, London grew from three distinct centres: the walled settlement founded by the Romans on the banks of the Thames in the 1st century ce, today known as the City of London, “the Square Mile,” or simply “the City”; facing it across the bridge on the lower gravels of the south bank, the suburb of Southwark; and a mile upstream, on a great southward bend of the river, the City of Westminster. The three settlements had distinct and complementary roles. London, “the City,” developed as a centre of trade, commerce, and banking. The London familiar to international visitors is a much smaller place than that. Tourist traffic concentrates on an area defined by the main attractions, each drawing between one and seven million visitors in the course of the year: Buckingham Palace, the British Museum, the National Gallery, Westminster Abbey, Madame Tussaud’s waxwork collection, the Tower of London, the three great South Kensington museums (Natural History, Science, and Victoria and Albert), and the Tate galleries. In scale, the London most tourists visit resembles the metropolis as it was in the late 18th century, a city of perhaps 10 square miles (26 square km) explorable on foot in all directions from Trafalgar Square.
Resident Londoners see the metropolis in even more localized terms. Property correspondents and estate agents like to describe London as a collection of villages, and there is some truth in their cliché. Because London had developed in a dispersed, haphazard fashion from an early stage, many of its later suburbs were able to grow around, or within reach of, some existing nucleus such as a church, coaching inn, mill, parkland, or common. Buildings of different ages and types help to define the character of residential areas as well as to relieve suburban monotony. The population in the various neighbourhoods tends to be diverse because the working of the English housing market has provided most areas, even the most exclusive, with at least some public rental housing. The chemistry of location, building stock, local amenities, and property values combines with that of a multiethnic population to give rise to a great variety of residential microcosms within the metropolis. Neighbourhood ties are strong. Wherever Londoners meet and talk, they avidly compare nuances of the districts in which they live because where they live seems to count for as much as who they are.
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