I don't feel proprietary, but I do feel there is a human identity to the borough of Hackney that's quite peculiar. It was always bloody-minded and difficult; it always stood up to central government.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Hackney gets a bit of a bad rap, but it's the only place I've ever lived that felt like a community. I know my neighbours.
London has always moved and surprised me, reinventing itself in ways both fresh and familiar. It's a contrary, complex and creative city, an anarchist of a thousand faces - fickle and unfailing, tender and bleak, ambitious and callous.
I didn't come from a traditional Tory background; it was urban and metropolitan.
I find the aristocratic parts of London so unattractive and angular; the architecture is so white and gated. But in New York, it's different - even uptown it's really grand, and there's no real segregation there. It's all mixed up.
Finally, there's a sense in which I look at this Westminster village and London intelligentsia as an outsider.
No offense to Bushwick, where all my neighbors greeted me on the street and there is a growing arts community and a curious beauty to its industrial zone, but Bushwick is no Williamsburg, even if the real estate agents would have you believe it is.
I feel like all Londoners relate more to New York - L.A. doesn't feel like a 'city' city. It's like a sleepy town.
Suburbia is all about private ownership and not having to share, and it leads to a paranoid, defensive mindset. I know this, having grown up in Essex.
Oh, I live in London. So, whether I like it or not, I am a member of the metropolitan elite. If I were anywhere else in the country, I'd hate me.
London is a modern Babylon.
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