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![]() ![]() The debate over whether to construct a new airport for London, or just to add a third runway at Heathrow airport west of the capital, is a good example. ![]() But in transport, education and housing, this will present policy makers with great challenges as well as opportunities, as is being discovered by Britain’s Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government and Boris Johnson, the Conservative mayor of Greater London since 2008. London’s centrality to British economic performance, and its role as the nation’s chief gateway for trade and investment, will not change in the foreseeable future. Neither is it true in Italy, where the glorious artistic heritage and local identities of Florence, Naples and Venice place them beside rather than below Rome in importance. This is not true in Germany, where Berlin is the nation’s political nerve centre but Frankfurt is the financial capital, Hamburg is the media capital and other cities, such as Düsseldorf and Munich, compete with Berlin as dynamic business hubs. ![]() On the other hand, London’s dominance means that other British cities, including once great imperial commercial and manufacturing centres such as Birmingham, Bristol and Liverpool, struggle to emerge from the capital’s shadow. By 2018 the capital’s output will be 16 per cent higher than it was before the financial crash of 2008, the CEBR says. According to the Centre for Economics and Business Research, a British-based independent forecaster, London will record economic growth next year of 3.8 per cent, accounting for almost a third of Britain’s entire economic expansion. ![]() On the positive side, London generates much of the wealth that helps to protect and raise living standards elsewhere in Britain. This brings both advantages and disadvantages. More than in any other European city, London life is seamlessly woven into the global economy, global population movements and global culture. London leads and shapes the nation of which it forms part in a way that only Moscow and Paris, among large European capitals, come close to matching.īut London’s significance to Britain, Europe and the world extends further than that. For others, such as Istanbul and Milan, the reverse is true. Some cities, such as Brasília and Washington, are the political capitals of their countries but not their business and financial centres. ![]()
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