Where is London?

February 17, 2023 6:49 AM

This is a vague question, but I'm interested in the common view of (please write your demographic/geography) of the border of London? I.e if you live here people in England will know you aren't really a london dweller but you might tell someone in Asia and they wouldn't care. I know there is "Greater London" which to me seems like akin to a Metro area.. There is the City, which is a tiny area but just a small part (like FIDI
posted by sandmanwv to Human Relations (36 answers total)

London ends at the end of zone 5 of the Tube.
posted by parmanparman at 7:07 AM on February 17, 2023 [5 favorites]

I'm in Canada and I've visited London a fair bit as I've got cousins there. I think if someone is in Canada and saying where they're from then London is going to extend until they're closer to some other city that people might know. So really if you're from England you'd be saying you're from London, Oxford, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, or Newcastle depending which of those you're closest to. In the same way that pretty much anyone from within 300km of Toronto will say they're from there when abroad because no one is going to know where Guelph or Peterborough are.

For my purposes I think London extends as far as the public transit system so if you can get there from the tube or a city bus then it's London.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 7:13 AM on February 17, 2023 [4 favorites]

‘Inside the M25’ is one of the many definitions.
posted by lokta at 7:20 AM on February 17, 2023 [8 favorites]

I'm from the UK, have lived in London but not for a long time. The M25 motorway forms a handy border. It encompasses places like Orpington, Caterham, Dartford etc, which are technically separate from London but to someone from far away this wouldn't be important. The tube extends quite a way outside the M25 - Amersham is on the tube but is definitely not in London.
posted by altolinguistic at 7:22 AM on February 17, 2023 [5 favorites]

Yeah I'd normally think of the M25 as a useful border to say something lives "in" London, as essentially no-one lives in the city of London.

If I said I was going into London, I pretty much always mean the City of London, with an exception if I was visiting someone.. although I guess I would say I'm going into London if I was going to Greenwich etc
posted by Cannon Fodder at 7:28 AM on February 17, 2023

I'm British and middle-aged. I work in London but have never lived there.

If someone tells me they live in London, I take them at their word (and expect them to have a much stronger and well-defined notion what that means than I do). That said, I do have a personal concept of "London". Looking at a map, it seems to extend to somewhere between London fare zones 5 and 6.

Anything outside the M25 is definitely not London, even if it has a Tube station (looking at *you*, Amersham).
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 7:31 AM on February 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

The 32 boroughs.

Demographic: American, lived in London 10 years, married to a Londoner (born in Paddington.)
posted by DarlingBri at 7:32 AM on February 17, 2023

As someone from the UK who grew up quite far away from London and then went to university with people who grew up in places like Watford (end of a tube line, just inside the M25) and Virginia Water (train links to London but not on the tube, just outside the M25), those places definitely registered as 'functionally London' to me.

Conversely, Hatfield (in Hertfordshire, like Watford, and a mere 14 miles northeast of Watford, but outside the M25) registers as 'definitely not London' to me. So there's clearly a mental boundary, and on the north side it appears to be South Mimms services for me.
posted by terretu at 7:33 AM on February 17, 2023

I would say greater London is within the M25 but London proper is inside the North and South Circular roads. For example, in the East you have Manor Park, abutting the Circular on one side, and Ilford on the other. Manor Park is E12 and Ilford is IG1 — in my mind the N, S, W and E postcodes are superiorly London.

It reminds me of when I was a teenager and met a guy who told me he was from London... I was very impressed at the time but as an adult realised he lived in Watford of all places. It makes sense as a shorthand though for people who don't know London well.

Demographic: mid-thirties import, have lived in London since 2010.
posted by socky_puppy at 7:39 AM on February 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

Up to and including zone 6
posted by mosswinter at 7:41 AM on February 17, 2023

I'm 40. I've lived in London for 20 years and I think of London as any place with a tube station, which would make a place like Amersham juuust squeak through.
posted by unicorn chaser at 7:43 AM on February 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

The counter-point to the North and South circular argument is that Wembley is outside the South Circular and I don't think anyone is arguing Wembley is not in London.

Postcodes are similarly problematic as they exclude most of NW London, like Havering or Uxbridge and fully half of Brent.
posted by DarlingBri at 7:50 AM on February 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

Answers to this question will be hotly debated depending on whether someone wants to communicate that they are inside of or outside of London for whatever reason. This is in the same way that people who live in northern Virginia or southern Maryland will sometimes say they're "from DC" as a sort of useful convenience demonym, while infuriating people who live in DC proper.

For simple communication, I also refer to the presence of tube stations, or the M25, but "grater London" is a much more helpful concept because it's not suggesting any sort of rigid boundary that can be debated for technical precision. That said, disagreeing about this sort of thing is a British pastime and you'll hear passionate support foropposing solutions. Good luck!

Do Los Angeles next if you really want a debate to get nasty.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 7:54 AM on February 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: I'm somewhat shocked! Generally answers are similar to what is officially Greater London (or larger). I'm looking at places through google maps like Couldsen that look like villages. I'm guess I'm comparing it to NYC, which city limits outside of places in queens and in bronx all high density urbanity (nobody in NYC would call Yonkers or Jersey City NYC too, even if they are urban). To me all these places look like burbs, so if you're a yuppie/hipster in Chelsea or Islington or Brixton and someone says "I live in London, Couldsen", wouldn't they scoff?
posted by sandmanwv at 8:08 AM on February 17, 2023

Jay Foreman of Unfinished London did an amusing video on London's boroughs which addresses what is and isn't London.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:16 AM on February 17, 2023

Best answer: To me all these places look like burbs, so if you're a yuppie/hipster in Chelsea or Islington or Brixton and someone says "I live in London, Couldsen", wouldn't they scoff?

They'd say "Where?!" - I've never heard of Coulsden, having lived in London for 5 years, and grown up about an hour outside London.

But I think the answer is that we all tailor our answers to questions like these, to suit the person we're speaking to. Someone from Coulsden (now I've looked it up) would only bother saying they're from Coulsden if they know the person they're speaking to is from very nearby and has heard of it.

They'd maybe tell someone from Brixton that they live "kind of Croydon way" on the basis that most people in London know where Croydon is but have never heard of Coulsden.

If they were talking to someone from elsewhere in the UK, they might just say "I'm from London," or "I'm from the edge of London, near Croydon".

If they were talking to someone from the US, they'd just say they were from London.

(But FWIW, my personal general rule would be that it's the 32 boroughs that constitute London.)
posted by penguin pie at 8:22 AM on February 17, 2023 [7 favorites]

I live on the very edge of London and my view is, if you get to vote for the Mayor (not the Lord Mayor) you live in London. Anywhere called ‘London Borough of…’, even if you consider yourself to be in Middlesex or Surrey or somewhere.

Coulsdon (is that where you mean?) is a bus ride outside London as far as I’m concerned.
posted by Phanx at 8:23 AM on February 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

nobody in NYC would call Yonkers or Jersey City NYC too

Nobody in the five boroughs would, but people from Yonkers or Jersey City could absolutely introduce themselves as "from NYC" to non-New Yorkers. Like, I live a few hundred miles from my hometown; I say I'm "from DC" (and sometimes the other person says "no way, me too!" and it turns out that neither of us are from the official map-borders of DC but rather from different towns in MD or VA or in one memorable case, that bit of WV that juts down toward Rt 7).

"London" has similarly fluid borders depending on who you are talking to.
posted by basalganglia at 8:26 AM on February 17, 2023 [10 favorites]

I live inside the M25, but it's not London, it's Essex. I'm 1/4 mile from where two of the outer London Boroughs meet. We are not London because:

- although we are on the Tube network (zone 5), our over 60s don't get the Freedom Pass for free bus, Overground and Tube travel that is available to over 60s who live in a London borough. We are only entitled to a free bus pass (not Overgound or Tube) after State Pension age is reached (which is currently 66).

- our roads, policing, library services, etc. come under the remit of Essex County Council.

- we pay council tax to our own local authority, which is not a London borough.

So, within spitting distance of London, but definitely not part of London.
posted by essexjan at 8:26 AM on February 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm 40. I've lived in London for 20 years and I think of London as any place with a tube station, which would make a place like Amersham juuust squeak through.

Nope, not true, see my answer above. There are places in Zone 6 which are part of London Boroughs (e.g. Upminster, L B of Havering) but I'm in Zone 5 and it's not a London Borough.
posted by essexjan at 8:28 AM on February 17, 2023

I grew up in Knockholt and Halstead in Kent, which are adjacent to Greater London's southeast border (Knockholt was part of Greater London until 1969). Having a London postcode matches my understanding of what was and wasn't London fairly well - going to Bromley or Bexleyheath definitely wasn't "going into London"; Lewisham or Greenwich definitely was.
posted by offog at 8:47 AM on February 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

Londoner here. Inside the M25 is the best practical definition for me. But it's complicated.
posted by Paul Slade at 8:59 AM on February 17, 2023

As a born Londoner, it's fuzzy edge that lies roughly between Zone 5 and the M25.

After living in Scotland for twenty years, I also appreciate the view from a distance: everything south of Cambridge and east of Oxford is, functionally, London.
posted by automatronic at 9:21 AM on February 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

Looking at south London, which I know better than north London, the M25 is probably too generous but the South Circular is way too narrow. Places like Biggin Hill and Coulsdon feel like they’re out of town to me — but they also don’t feel like they’re properly in the countryside, so *shrug*.

If you want an alternative, specialised definition, the London Natural History Society recording area is a circle 20 miles in diameter centred on St Pauls Cathedral. That definition has been in use since 1913, predating both Greater London and the M25. People still use it for London lists although it is definitely bigger than London proper. And would have been even more so in 1913.
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 9:33 AM on February 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I'm Australian, I've lived in London for 15 years. I would say that Zones 1, 2 and 3 are definitely London; beyond that, London-ness is a kind-of sliding scale rather than a yes/no switch, but if I had to draw a line I personally would draw it at the boroughs, like a couple of commenters above. That does, yes, encompass some surprisingly remote areas.

Notes:

First, the influence of my background: in many Australian cities, there is the "CBD" (or "central business district") of perhaps a square mile and ANYTHING outside that is a suburb. It might have a bunch of great cafes and shops and businesses and blocks of flats and places to go out in, it might be five minutes walk across a park to the city centre, it might be (and often is) more densely populated than the CBD itself - but it's still a suburb. So my instinct on what is a "suburb" in London is off; by instinct I would describe anything outside Zone 1 as being in the suburbs (and honestly, some of west Zone 1 as well). But I do try not to, because that's just not what it means here!

Second, from this admittedly foreign perspective, some stuff that maybe differs from the framing you're used to:
* Being in a suburb does not necessarily mean you are not "in London". There are a bunch of places that I reckon almost everyone would consider to be (a) definitely a suburb and (b) definitely "in London" - Leyton, Forest Hill, Tooting, Wood Green, Wimbledon, basically the whole of zone 3 and a fair bit of zone 4.
* You ask about whether people living somewhere more central might scoff at people living somewhere quite far out who say they live in London. In my experience people do very specifically say "oh that's not really London though is it" about one place in particular: Croydon, which is one of the boroughs. I think this is partly because Croydon became part of London quite "recently" (1965), and partly because it's quite far south and the underground skews very heavily north so people who centre their idea of London-ness on the underground map are inclined to exclude it. But it's also because it has its own pretty substantial town centre that exerts its own gravitational pull. That makes it feel more like an actual different place compared to some of the more forgettable outer suburbs, which are somehow more "London" just by dint of there being much less stuff there, such that their connection to central London remains their defining feature.
posted by severalbees at 9:34 AM on February 17, 2023 [4 favorites]

"But it's also because it [Croydon] has its own pretty substantial town centre that exerts its own gravitational pull”

Yeah, and places like Romford and Watford as well. But even then, I think it would be weird to say that Kate Moss isn’t a native Londoner because she’s from Croydon.
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 9:43 AM on February 17, 2023

Best answer: I think of London as being anywhere with a London postal address and postcode. My boss thinks of London as being inside the North Circular. (I don't think he's ever given any consideration to South London)

I grew up in one of the London boroughs but without a London postcode (Tube zone 5/6). It's really not London in the cool sense and if I meet people from London, they will often say or imply that it's not really in London. I would agree, it's better described as part of the London suburbs, which are fundamentally not the same place as "London".
posted by plonkee at 11:57 AM on February 17, 2023

Best answer: I'm a Londoner, lived here all my life, and live in Brixton. The strange but true answer is that everything inside the M25 is London, and we don't scoff at any of it except Croydon. This doesn't make much sense because there are other regional centres at the same distance that have as strong of their own gravity and identity, e.g. Kingston, but no one seems to have a problem with those being in London. But Croydon is still definitely part of London, regardless of the jokes.
posted by iivix at 12:46 PM on February 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

POV of an American that has never been: if someone says they’re from a city and we are a flight away from that place, I assume they mean they live in a place where, at minimum, lots of people work in the city (however it’s defined by the government/ mailing addresses) and default to that city for specialized errands. If we are having the conversation closer to the place, I’d assume they are naming the mailing address.
posted by tchemgrrl at 4:43 PM on February 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

I think it helps to consider that London sprawls in a way more akin to Los Angeles than other European or eastern American cities. Yes, there is “the City” which is the financial district; and Westminster with government and high concentrations of tourist destinations; but our lives don’t collectively orient towards those areas. No one lives in "the City" and then Londoners don't really live in the tourist areas. In that sense your Londoness isn’t measured by how far you are from any central point.

Maybe more controversially I would also say that it’s worth considering that London is truly exceptional in the UK where the US has numerous cities that stand in their own right. In my experience people from San Francisco or LA or Chicago or Miami or Philly all have a strong sense of identity that isn’t in comparison to New York. In the UK most cities are in London’s shadow an so people who are from London, in all its expansiveness, are still distinctly Londoners.
posted by spibeldrokkit at 4:39 AM on February 18, 2023

Lived in London for 25 years, the City of London for 15, grew up 45 mins outside.

As others have suggested, London fades out, rather than ends at any point. Places that were once definitely not in London a few decades ago, never mind longer, have been absorbed into its gradual expansion, green belt aside. If you live on its shores, whether you say you live in London, or somewhere else, probably depends on who you're speaking to.

Almost no one would conflate "the City of London" with "London", aside from historical holdovers like the Lord Mayor of London (who is only the Lord Mayor of the City). 350 years ago Samuel Pepys on business in Westminster might say he "returned to London", meaning the City, because they were then different places, practically with fields between them. Now it'd be "the City" or "the Square Mile".

Regarding "the 32 boroughs" - don't forget the City, which is not a borough (like DC is not a state).
posted by fabius at 5:28 AM on February 18, 2023

The distinction between the US and the UK here is that, while the US spreads its hubs around (legislators in Washington, finance in New York, media in LA etc), London sucks in all those activities to itself.

That doesn't stop cities like Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow and Edinburgh each having a very strong sense of their own unique identity, though. No one from any of those places would thank you for assuming they're just watered-down Londoners.
posted by Paul Slade at 5:32 AM on February 18, 2023

The border of London is where Harvester restaurants are. Harvester restaurants are not competitive enough to survive a proper restaurant culture, but instead indicate the non-urban. Draw a line through all the Harvester restaurants on a map and you have the borders of London.
posted by eyeofthetiger at 8:31 AM on February 18, 2023 [14 favorites]

Distance and resolution. I grew up in the sprawl, but outside the M25, where decisions were made arrived 100 tears ago to prevent unending grey towns with a Green Belt around London that might include farm land to sustain the population, and to deal with the soot from houses burning coke and coal. If you want another way to argue about it: London is inside the Green Belt.

Adding to the Tube Stop debacle -- the new Elizabeth Line rail goes from way oustide east to way west. While the M4/Thames Valley definitely qualifies as 'sprawl', it's not London.
posted by k3ninho at 1:52 AM on February 19, 2023

Adding to the Tube Stop debacle -- the new Elizabeth Line rail goes from way oustide east to way west.

If it helps using tube stops as a guide to London's boundaries any easier, the pedant in me can point out the Elizabeth Line isn't a "tube" - it's not part of London Underground, but a railway like the Overground lines (but one that happens to go underground for some of its length).
posted by fabius at 5:10 AM on February 19, 2023

This question reminds me of the opening of hilary mantel's excellent novel beyond black:
"Travelling: the dank oily days after Christmas. The motorway, its wastes looping London: the margin’s scrub grass flaring orange in the lights, and the leaves of the poisoned shrubs striped yellow-green like a cantaloupe melon. Four o’clock: light sinking over the orbital road. Teatime in Enfield, night falling on Potter’s Bar."
The answer is spiritually at some point in that paragraph
posted by mosswinter at 1:04 PM on February 20, 2023