Louisa Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > MrBen dear heart, it is a generalisation as I > stated, but equally not s million miles from the > truth. Yes socio-demographic change is a constant > but not an irrelevant Darwin style natural > selection process either. It involves real people > and it's happening at a ridiculously and ever > faster pace, and IMO for the wrong reasons. > Looking back at previous waves of social change > brought about by immigration and the industrial > revolution, we see cities like London taking many > decades to gradually change and for reasons > primarily associated with work (initially at > least). The more recent changes are often > characterised by sharp house price rises which > have allowed the natural process of the resident > population to reach retirement age and sell up for > a pile in the sticks (this is not uncommon > historically), to become a savage opportunity for > transient cash buyers from wealthier places to > move in and make a bomb on run down property > stock, turning these into million pound homes and > forcing people out into the poorer suburbs and new > towns to find anything resembling a half > affordable property. > > Louisa. The changes taking place now are also to do with work - not least the tech and finance industries. The demographic changes in London that took place in the 50s and 60s were just as rapid. The current changes in the fortunes of SE London have been gathering pace since the 80s and are comparable in terms of speed and scale to those of the preceding decades.