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Modern London

Today Greater London comprises the City of London and the 32 London boroughs (including the City of Westminster). 12 of these boroughs are defined as Inner London, the remaining 20 defined as Outer London. The dominant centre of activity in London is the City of Westminster (including the West End) which is the main cultural, entertainment and consumer district, the location of most of London's major corporate headquarters outside of the financial services sector, and the centre of the UK's national government. The City of London (also known as the "Square Mile" or just "the City") is at the centre of international finance, and is Europe’s main business centre. The headquarters of more than 100 of Europe’s 500 largest companies are all in London. The London foreign exchange market is the largest in the world, with an average daily turnover of $504 billion, more than the New York and Tokyo exchanges combined. While very busy during the working week, most parts of the City tend to be quiet at weekends, since it is primarily a non-residential area.

London is one of the most visited cities on earth (along with cities such as: New York City, Tokyo, Los Angeles, and Paris). Tourist attractions are located mainly in Central London, comprising the historic City of London; the West End with its many cinemas, bars, clubs, theatres, shops and restaurants; the City of Westminster with Westminster Abbey, the royal residences of Buckingham Palace, Clarence House and St. James's Palace; the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea with its museums (the Science Museum, Natural History Museum, and Victoria and Albert Museum) and Hyde Park. Other important tourist attractions include St Paul's Cathedral, the National Gallery; the South Bank and Bankside areas of Southwark with the Globe Theatre and the Tate Modern; London Bridge, Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, and the Tate Britain on the Embankment; and the British Museum in Bloomsbury. There are many other places of interest across the city.

Central London Central London is a much-used but unofficial and vaguely defined term for the most inner part of London. There are many definitions and each has its own notional boundary. Some are defined by clear boundaries, others less so. All definitions have in common the notion that central London is smaller than, and a subset of, Inner London.

The City of London is the principal financial district of the United Kingdom, and is one of the most important in the world. It is governed by the Corporation of London, an ancient body headed by the Lord Mayor of London. The City also has its own police force, the City of London police. Once dominated by the dome of St Paul's Cathedral, London is home to modern skyscrapers, including Tower 42 (formerly, and popularly still, known as the NatWest Tower) and 30 St Mary Axe (popularly known as the "Gherkin", built in 2003). The skyline is set to change further over the next few years as more high-profile skyscrapers are being built in the City of London to satisfy the need for additional office space. The City has a resident population of about 7,000 people, but a daytime working population of more than 300,000. Its primacy as the chief financial district has been directly challenged in recent years by Canary Wharf in East London.

The West End is the most popular shopping and entertainment district in London. Trafalgar Square is the most prominent landmark. Oxford Street is one of the best-known and busiest shopping streets in the world. Running from Charing Cross Road in the east to Marble Arch in the west, via Oxford Circus where it crosses Regent Street, it is home to many large department stores and shops (Selfridges, John Lewis, Marks and Spencer). Tottenham Court Road runs north from the eastern end of Oxford Street towards the north of the city centre, and is best known for its plethora of hi-fi, computer and electronics stores. West of the City, Covent Garden is home to the Avenue of Stars, London's version of Hollywood's Walk of Fame.

South of Oxford Street's eastern end is Soho, a network of small streets crowded with restaurants, pubs, clubs, smaller shops and boutiques, and theatre and cinemas, as well as media companies and film, advertising and post-production companies. Soho is also well known for its very lively club and bar scene, the notorious sex industry and the major "gay quarter" of the city. Piccadilly is an elegant thoroughfare running from Piccadilly Circus in the east to Hyde Park Corner in the west. It is adjacent to Mayfair, and Green Park. Regent Street and Bond Street are important thoroughfares.

East London saw much of London's early industrial development and much of it now is being extensively redeveloped as part of the Thames Gateway. It was also key to London's successful bid to host the 2012 Olympics, and is now scheduled to undergo extensive regeneration in the run-up to the games. This is the second time in modern history that East London has seen large-scale rebuilding: it took the full force of the Blitz in World War Two, with post-war reconstruction leaving a legacy of bleak housing estates and tower blocks in several areas.

The East End of London is closest to the original Port of London, and tended for that reason to be the area of the city where immigrants arriving into the port would settle first. Successive waves of immigrants include the French, the Huguenots, Belgians, Jews, Gujaratis, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and many other groups.

The East End extends from the eastern side of the City of London and includes areas such as Whitechapel, Mile End, Bethnal Green, Hackney, Bow, Millwall and Poplar. The area has many places of interest including many of London's markets, (for example Columbia Road Flower Market, Spitalfields Market, Brick Lane Market, Petticoat Lane Market), and several museums, including the Geffrye Museum and the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green. The East End of London is also home to the longest street market in Europe, Walthamstow market.

The London Docklands, on the Isle of Dogs along the Thames in the East End, has developed enormously since the early-1980s. For a period in the early-1980s, many warehouse buildings in Wapping had been occupied and used as artists' studios and low-cost loft living spaces. This inevitably drew the attention of property developers who gradually (and then not so gradually) moved in to take over. The London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) was set up in 1981 to accelerate the process, and the first phases of major development started to reshape the area, culminating in Canary Wharf, whose best-known feature is the 1 Canada Square office tower (which is often incorrectly called "Canary Wharf"), which has been the UK's tallest skyscraper since 1991.

A massive-scale development within the last three or four years has added a great many more skyscrapers, and many large businesses (investment banks, law firms, etc.) have moved in. A new headquarters for HSBC and Barclays as well as the European headquarters of Citigroup, have now been completed, and are in use. Many more skyscrapers are being built in the area over the next decade.

Attracted by this growth, restaurants, bars and nightclubs have opened, there are three interconnected shopping malls beneath the Canary Wharf structure, and a cinema complex has opened in the area. The Docklands Light Railway (DLR) serves the area, connecting to the London Underground at Bank, Shadwell, Canning Town and Stratford stations.

There has also been a great deal of gentrification and residential development in the area: North of the Thames around Limehouse Basin and toward Wapping, as well as south of the Thames in Rotherhithe where former wharfs and the old docks have been converted into high-priced loft apartments for a community of bankers, software developers and others working in the financial service industries in and around Docklands.

Further east in the London Borough of Newham are London City Airport and the ExCeL Exhibition Centre.

West London includes many of the traditionally fashionable and expensive residential areas such as Notting Hill, made better known in 1999 by a film of the same name starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts. The Notting Hill Carnival is an annual event led by members of the Caribbean community, many of whom have lived in the area since the 1950s. The carnival attracts up to 1.5 million people, making it the largest street festival in the world.

Within the district is the famous antique market at Portobello Road. Kensington and Chelsea are the most expensive places to live in the country. The area is also famous for the Kings Road, a distinguished and attractive shopping street and thoroughfare.

Further to the west, at White City, near Shepherd's Bush, is the principal operating centre for the BBC, while in the extreme west, in the London Borough of Hillingdon, lies Europe's largest and busiest airport, London Heathrow. In terms of international passenger traffic Heathrow Airport is also the busiest airport in the world.

Considered more south-west than West London on account of its being the only London borough to straddle the River Thames, Richmond upon Thames includes the attractive riverside districts of Richmond and Twickenham. This corner of London is home to Richmond Park, Europe's largest, and Twickenham, the home of English rugby union. Richmond is one of the most picturesque suburbs in southwest London. It is very popular in summer with university rowing teams and tourists strolling along the bankside. It is a green and leafy town and it is surrounded by large open spaces.

West London is home to 4 professional football clubs; Queens Park Rangers, Chelsea, Fulham and Brentford.

North London includes suburbs such as Hampstead and Highgate, which retain a village atmosphere. North London is hillier than the south, and many of the hills give excellent views across the city. Large parks include Hampstead Heath, which includes Parliament Hill, noted for its fine views over the city, and the Hampstead bathing ponds; and Alexandra Park, site of Alexandra Palace. Many areas have significant minority populations including Stamford Hill, home to a significant community of Orthodox Jews and Muslims, the Green Lanes area of Harringay and the Finsbury Park area have large Turkish and Greek communities. Islington is considered one of the more affluent areas in London, due to large scale gentrification, although it is in fact one of the most deprived boroughs in the country; it is also home to Arsenal football club. North London's other world-famous football team, Tottenham Hotspur, play in nearby Tottenham.

North London's two other major football teams are Leyton Orient and Barnet F.C..

South London contains such diverse districts as Wimbledon (famous as the home of the major tennis Wimbledon Championships), Kingston upon Thames, Bermondsey, Clapham, Eltham, Lewisham, Woolwich, Blackheath, Southwark, New Cross and Dulwich. Redevelopment of the Elephant and Castle, a road intersection and district close to the centre, is due to start in 2006.

Greenwich is on the banks of the Thames where the river broadens into a wide meandering reach of muddy water. It is an historic neighbourhood and boasts a fine park and the Royal Greenwich Observatory. It also has a popular market.

Brixton, Camberwell, Lewisham and Peckham are home to many families (and their descendants) who migrated to London from the West Indies during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, sometimes known as Afro-Caribbeans.

London had about 860,000 people in 1801 (by comparison, Paris had about 670,000 in 1802), and the population of Edo (modern-day Tokyo, Japan), at the time the largest city in the world, has been estimated at 1 million to 1.25 million people. London was the most populous city in the world from 1825 until 1925, when it was overtaken by New York.

The city and the 32 boroughs had an estimated 7,429,200 inhabitants as of July 1, 2004, making London the second most populous city in Europe behind Moscow (10,415,400 inhabitants in 2005).

In the 2001 census, 71% of these seven million people classed their ethnic group as white (classified as British White (60%), Irish White (3%) or "Other White" (8%) in the 2001 census), 10% as Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or "Other Asian" (mostly Sri Lankan and other South Asian ethnicities), 5% as black African, 5% as black Caribbean, 1% as "Other Black", 3% as mixed race, 1% as Chinese and 2% as Other (mostly Filipino, Japanese, and Vietnamese). The largest religious groupings are Christian (58.2%), No Religion (15.8%), Muslim (7.2%), Hindu (4.1%), Jewish (2.1%), and Sikh (1.5%). 21.8% of inhabitants were born outside the European Union. The Irish are the largest foreign-born group in London (numbering approximately 200,000).

In January 2005, The Guardian newspaper published a survey of London's ethnic and religious diversity, which claimed that there were more than 300 languages spoken and 50 non-indigenous communities of more than 10,000 population in London.

The population of the urban area of London at the 2001 census, as calculated by the Office for National Statistics, was 8,278,251 inhabitants. London's urban area is the third-largest in Europe, behind Moscow (11.7 million inhabitants in 2000) and Paris (9.6 million inhabitants in 1999).

Unlike many other countries, the UK does not provide national metropolitan area population figures based on commuter percentages and economic influence. This is left up to each individual city to define. This has created some confusion when comparing London's true metropolitan area region with others around the world. It is helped even less by confusion of the term "Greater London" with the political entity of the City of London, which is often confused with the metropolitan area.

Without a specific national reference to London's metropolitan area, different sources provide alternate definitions. One such definition describes the London metropolitan area (6,267 square miles, 16,043 km²) with a population of 13,945,000 (in 2001); larger than the combined populations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. If this definition is followed, then London is the largest metropolitan area of Europe, along with Moscow (whose metropolitan area has somewhere around 14 million people), and above Paris (11.5 million people in the metropolitan area in 2004). However, the definition used here for the metropolitan area of London should be taken with a lot of caution, as it includes areas quite far away from London, such as Dover, right by the English Channel, or Colchester, in the very north of Essex. Discounting eastern Kent, northern Essex, and West Berkshire, the figure is closer to 12 million to 12.5 million people.

In 2004, the Greater London Authority defined a "metropolitan region" centred on London with a population of 18 million. This "metropolitan region" extends to cover much of the South East England and part of the East of England administrative regions, including places as far away as Oxford or the Isle of Wight.

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