incognitomaorach
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User ID: 1274
incognitomaorach
3d ago
Absolutely, the main point does stand. I'm unfamiliar with the French case, but London's role as a central capital of a single polity probably contributes to this phenomenon. London's been an immigrant city (internal migrants) for 600 years, the closest thing to "standard" English is based on the London prestige dialect, which itself was just a variety of that spoken in the East Midlands- the population churn was constant. Prior to 1750 there was basically London, a few market towns, the other national capitals (Dublin really) and that was it for cities. Places like Rome, Milan, Naples, Munich, Cologne etc. were all independent city states, or capitals of smaller polities which later unified, which must have encouraged the decentralised growth.
incognitomaorach
3d ago
I really liked Busan the two times I visited- nicer climate than Seoul, although in summer it becomes overrun with a spring break type atmosphere. Beaches, near to more historic/rural parts of the country as well. The night life felt more relaxed and the food was more varied. In terms of opportunities, its the centre of the main industrial zone (with Ulsan/Daegu). It's also a bit different politically. For the number 2 city to be 3m/7.5m metro in a country of 50m sounds pretty large to me!
Britain is really lopsided in that London might as well be a different country economically speaking, with vastly higher wages, economic opportunity and so on, but by any reasonable definition London is only 3-4x larger than Manchester. It's just a boundaries definition, a bit like when Paris gets reported as having a population of 3m. Greater Manchester is ~3m people and Greater London is 9-12m depending on the source. There's a case to be made that the Liverpool-Manchester urban region is a Ruhr equivalent conurbation, with bad transport holding back the economic integration.
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