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Pretty self-explanatory I think. Which is has more activities and stuff going around pretty much.
The reason I ask is because I have a cousin from South Jersey that recently visited London. He was telling me that he has a hard time understanding why people compare the two in terms of feel because London feels like a quiet town in comparison, and I'm pretty sure he wasn't just talking about parts outside the core either. Though he did acknowledge that he stayed in the more suburban parts which may have influenced his opinion a tad bit. It would be unusual for him to booster about NYC too considering he doesn't like the place and that kind of life much at all.
So just got me curious since I have never been to London personally.
Unlike your friend, I'm staying right in the core of London and this is my impression thus far:
Very similar in terms of vibrancy, but less 24 hours. There still many crowds after 2 am but fewer things are open.
Busier than NYC on weekends. Slightly less busy over weekdays.
At a guess - a bigger proportion of tourists to natives compared to NY though it's difficult to say.
Things feel more spacious with more pedestrian spaces so people are less crushed together into cramped crowds.
About half the city looks like it's under construction. New mid-rises and high rises going up literally everywhere. A lot of the streets being torn up and renovated.
Mediocre street food (I've yet to try the rated restaurants though).
Clean - clean, clean, clean, clean, clean, clean ... (Very big difference).
Smells about a thousand times better.
Pretty as heck - Much of the architecture is white stone and much more detailed than most of the buildings in NYC.
Stupidly expensive.
Many white British and Europeans. Fewer people of color compared to NYC.
Less congestion, more orderly with better public transport.
Grander - in the sweeping European historic styles mixed with modern buildings. Anyone who says that London feels like a village is an idiot, sorry.
Taken altogether, London is a very different creature to New York. It reminds me a bit of those visions of the future we had on TV as kids where everything is clean, modern and orderly but you also have that inimitable British feel in some places too.
London has much lower density than NYC (less than half the density as NYC, on average) and so generally feels quieter. That said, there are some very vibrant parts of the city, especially around the West End.
But London is definitely less vibrant than NYC overall. In built form, it more resembles a gigantic, vastly more cosmopolitan Philly rather than a smaller version of NYC.
London is pretty vibrant overall. But I don't feel there's anywhere in London that is quite as vibrant as Times Square and some other areas in Manhattan.
But at the end of the day, it hardly matters at all. It goes without saying they are both magnificent cities. London is the New York of Europe. New York is the London of North America.
London is pretty vibrant overall. But I don't feel there's anywhere in London that is quite as vibrant as Times Square and some other areas in Manhattan.
But at the end of the day, it hardly matters at all. It goes without saying they are both magnificent cities. London is the New York of Europe. New York is the London of North America.
Both being vaguely similar in geographic size, the difference is in the distribution, as POC mentioned. London has more open spaces, squares, plazas, pedestrianized zones, for people to spread out, so it feels less crowded. But the overall vibrancy feels similar.
Manhattan’s daytime population is approximately 3.94 million; the census defined daytime population omits almost one-fourth of the total, or nearly 800,000 people. https://wagner.nyu.edu/files/rudince..._manhattan.pdf
Regardless, comparing the geographic island of Manhattan to an area defined as Central London is flawed since core New York does not equal Manhattan. Half the island is no more dense and often even less dense than many surrounding neighborhoods in the other boroughs. The bulk of that 4 million figure is spread throughout a handful of neighborhoods throughout the lower half of the island.
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