"Our capital, for better or worse, has become the pre-eminent global city, and from high culture to bars, spas and clubs, our pleasure industry is a driver of that prosperity."
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"Slow Burn City describes London in the early 21st century, the global city above all others, whose land and homes are tradeable commodities on international markets, a transit lounge and stopping-off point for the world's migrant populations, all to an extent greater than anywhere else.
"It is dazzling and exciting but also struggles to deal with the pressures created by its success. It is unable to offer many of its citizens a decent home, and its best qualities are threatened by speculation. Modern London tests to the limit the idea that, when it comes to the growth and organisation of a city, the free market knows best.
"London is a New Sybaris* of entertainment, art, fashion, cuisine and multiple refinements of pleasure, and a place of invention and opportunity where people are desperate to live."
* "Sybaris amassed great wealth thanks to its fertile land and busy port. Its inhabitants became famous among the Greeks for their hedonism, feasts, and excesses, to the extent that 'sybarite' and 'sybaritic' have become bywords for opulent luxury and outrageous pleasure-seeking."
Which you doubtless already knew.
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