Is Bristol The New London?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-hall/is-bristol-the-new-london_b_14036310.html
An editor of the Rough Guide has published a blog asking whether Bristol is the new London. It can never be that but she makes a good case for it as a
miniaturised version when she says:
London is an obvious destination for tourists to flock to when they visit the UK. It’s got everything: Museums, Gastronomy, History, Culture, Class, Theatre and oh, those Victorian and Georgian buildings! Well, Bristol pretty much offers the same, on a smaller scale.
She makes the point that Bristol is obviously not as well known as London throughout the world nor as well-known as, say, Manchester or Liverpool. It used to be. In the late 1700s only two English cities had populations of more than 50,000 - London and Bristol - and Bristol was England's second city for hundreds of years (Norwich and York might put up a spirited argument pushing their cases). It was only with the Industrial Revolution that Bristol slipped back in the pecking order as the great Northern and Midland cities took root and grew and grew.
These days having a Premier League football club also increases a city's identity around the world.
I think she captures the essence of the city with this comment:
So is Bristol the new London? Well, residents who are finding London ever more expensive to live in are flocking to the city in droves. But as a visitor, in short, Bristol is a place in the countryside; a city vibe with cozy countryside appeal. You really shouldn’t miss it when you visit the UK.
Bristol also fell victim to a champagne socialist city council in the 1980s and 1990s who believed that pushing the city's claims as a major tourist centre was elitist and they would spend no money, or next to nothing, on promoting the place. Despite that Bristol consistently appeared and still appears at number 7 or 8 (it often swaps with Oxford) in the Office of National Statistics (ONS) league table of annual overseas visitors to UK cities.
Its official population is now around 450,000 (up slightly from the figure quoted in the blog) but in reality it's bigger than that because there is another 'city' physically attached to its northern and eastern edge (you can't see the join) called the unitary authority of South Gloucestershire which takes the unbroken urban area population above 650,000.
Nevertheless, at times the place does feel like a very large village around the river and harbourside draped further over the many hills that pop up all around the city. The commercial docks are hidden discreetly on the edge of the city along the banks of the Severn estuary. In some ways its toy town airport is entirely in keeping with Bristol itself.
