On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 16:16:11 +0000, Michael Bell
wrote:
In article , Jonn Elledge
wrote:
"Michael Bell" wrote in message
...
Discussion of transport needs in London tends to be based on the idea
that the population of London is increasing. It is, but not by as much as
Ken
Livingstone says.
Ken estimates that the population of London will increase by 700 000
by 2016 (I don't know whether you got the impression that I did that it
was
much more), but the government estimates that the increase will be only
200
000, the rest (2/3!) is Ken's wishful thinking. This is reported here :-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/st...665779,00.html
Interesting... Where's the bit that gives the government estimates?
I presume the journalist has got it from the Registrar - General's reports,
now called something like "Office of population and census".
Used to be the Office of Population and Census Statistics (OPCS). now
simply the Office of National Statistics (ONS):
www.statistics.gove.uk
It would also be interesting to know what the population of London was in the
late 50s. Somehow it sounds more impressive to say "London expanding
remorselessly" than to say "London struggling to regain the population it had
in the late 50s" Part of the cause of that fall was certainly semi-forced
overspill to the likes of Milton Keynes and Stevenage, but some of it was
probably purely voluntary.
King's College's website has a good run-down:
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/...pop-table.html
Reformatted, this gives us:
YEAR = TOTAL [INNER LONDON + OUTER BOROUGHS]
1901 = 6,506,889 [4,536,267 + 1,970,622]
1911 = 7,160,441 [4,521,685 + 2,638,756]
1921 = 7,386,755 [4,484,523 + 2,902,232]
1931 = 8,110,358 [4,397,003 + 3,713,355]
1939 = 8,615,050 [4,013,400 + 4,601,650]
1951 = 8,348,023 [3,347,982 + 5,000,041]
1961 = 8,171,902 [3,195,114 + 4,976,788]
1971 = 8,119,246 [3,045,436 + 5,073,810]
1981 = 6,696,008 [2,497,978 + 4,198,030]
1991 = 6,679,699 [2,504,451 + 4,175,248]
2001 = 7,172,036 [2,765,975 + 4,406,061]
It's clear that the population grew rapidly in the first four decades
of the last century, by 32.4% overall, but vast bulk of this increase
was in the outer boroughs, while inner london actually declined by
11.5%. Since 1939, the overall population fell by some 22.5% by 1991,
but most of this was down to a drop of 1.5 milion in inner London,
while the outer boroughs lost only 0.43 million. It's notable,
though, that these flutuations - i.e. 1901 to 1939, and 1939 to 1991 -
were not steady decade-on-decade changes. In fact, it could be said
that the overall population was fairly static between 1931 and 1971,
which was followed by a massive drop by 1981.
In summary, then, the London of the early 21st century is in fact less
populace than the London of the middle of the 20th to a tune of 1.2
million, and even then after a rise of almost half a million in the
last decade or so. In a way, this probably challenges the received
wisdom about the capital, in that it is clearly less crowded than it
was 50 years ago, especially when one considers the urban exapanion,
house-building, etc.
--
Nick Cooper
[Carefully remove the detonators from my e-mail address to reply!]
The London Underground at War:
http://www.cwgcuser.org.uk/personal/...ra/lu/tuaw.htm
625-Online - classic British television:
http://www.625.org.uk
'Things to Come' - An Incomplete Classic:
http://www.thingstocome.org.uk