Also I think if you live in a Greater London Boroughs that border other counties or have addresses that still have the name of the old county the town/borough used to be in, you can say you're from said county. E.g. If you're from Sutton/Kingston/(South) Croydon you can say you are from Surrey, if you're from Bromley you can say you are from Kent, if you are from Havering or Barking you can say Essex or if you are from Hillingdon you could say Middlesex. It sounds kinda cool to say to someone who lives in like Zone 1 that you're from the "outskirts".
No Royal Mail postal address at all has a county in it. Counties have not been part of the postal address in the UK since 1996. Anyone who uses a county as part of their address is wrong to do so.
I live in France. I'm French. I've never lived in London, but fell in love with it ever since the first time I visited. I love everything about it, and visit as often as time and budget allow. I really, really consider myself a Londoner when I'm there. Perhaps that doesn't make sense, but London is home to me, as much as any home as ever felt. So, if home is where the heart is, I don't live in London, but London definitely is my home.
+Siemens 407 I flew back from Berlin to London in just 90 minutes earlier this month. That's quicker than some people can get to work on the outskirts of London, so maybe you are technically in London?
It's pretty simple. You live in London if you live in one of the London Boroughs. I live in Hampton Court, Elmbridge, Surrey, with a KT postcode, literally two minutes walk away from London (Richmond borough) across Hampton Court Bridge. My station is in zone 6. I have an 020 telephone number. But I don't live in London, I live in Elmbridge, Surrey. Simple.
I think it also depends on how you view it. E.g. I live in a London borough that borders Surrey. So I could equally say I am from Surrey yet also be from London (since historically that borough would've been in Surrey. I usually describe to people who live closer to central London as living in Surrey/Greater London but most people I know from parts further out in Surrey would say I am from London? o_O
East Molesey, Elmbridge, Surrey one side of the bridge - Hampton Court and Hampton, London Borough of Richmond the other side. Confusingly Hampton Court station is located on the Surrey side. Many anomalies along the London/Surrey boundaries. Another major one - the head office of Surrey County Council seated in Kingston is actually extraterritorial and does not govern Kingston borough, but does govern neighbouring Elmbridge, Epsom & Ewell etc.
I grew up in Bexley - Address was blah blah blah, Bexley, Kent, DA5 ... And my phone code was 0322 for Crayford. Bexley is a London Borough and the border with Kent was 100 yards or so across the road. Confused the hell out of the schools, council etc.
I live in the London Borough of Bexley but my postal address ends Kent with a DA1 postcode Which is Dartford, Kent. London Boroughs came into existence with the formation of the GLC Greater London Council. A lot of towns in a London Borough still use their old county names in their address.
Many folks from Bexley also don’t consider themselves Londoners. I went to sixth form there. How people describe themselves and where they go tells you a lot. Im from south east London, so Bexley is Kent - part of the outskirts, but still Kent.
hannah - It's a similar story where I was born (Romford) and raised (Hornchurch). If you go to those places and talk to people of my age group (mid-50s), they'll mostly tell you that they're Essex (as I certainly would), even though the London Borough of Havering has existed for nearly 55 years. If you ask them where their parents came from, it'll more than likely be somewhere in or very near the East End.
hannah60000 the mistake people make is putting the historic county in the address causes confusion to people 🤣 the correct format is without county, they are delivery instructions no more.
Post code relates ONLY to where your mail sorting office is, nothing to do with what county you're in. Bexley (and the borough of Bexley) are London, and defined as such when stating the population of London. People are stupid.
I live in SE London, so yes I live in London. I also have an 020 telephone number, so I really do live in London! Geoff nice to see that you used the correct code for London's telephone numbers... 020!
+Londonist Ltd Look forward to that. I'm old enough to remember 01 for London, then 071 &081, then 0171 & 0181, and now 020. My work number begins 020 3xxx xxxx, which confuses some people.
Alright then - I live outside the postal codes on the border of the boroughs within the telephone code area within the m25 and next to the busiest airport
I live in a tiny village miles outside London postcodes, right on the edge of the borough boundary, right on the edge of 020, right on the edge of zone 6, fairly close to the M25. From the map, it's pretty obvious where I live, given those facts. I consider it factually Greater London (because I'm technically inside all of those) but very much a kind of 'Inner Surrey' due to being 10 minutes walk away from farms, fields and sparsely built-upon land... which is factually in Surrey. The only thing that makes my area London-adjacent is the Roman road into London that passes through. Lots of traffic, but that's about it. Local church has been around since the 7th century, and all the manor houses and barns and such are still standing. There's even the village green that doesn't look like it'll ever become an office block.
The local government changes of 1965 did not take Havering out of the County of Essex, only from under the administration of Essex County Council. Havering is still Essex and the majority of residents would agree
I live in Cambridge. I live in London because I am in the "Greater London Commuting Areas" which is ridiculously large (and can stretch as far as Southend as well).
I'm always amused by the different reactions depending where people come from. I was bought up in Newham which until 1965 was in Essex under the old boroughs of East Ham and West Ham. Both areas have a E postcode and a 020 phone code. I now live in Havering which like Newham was created in 1965 when transferred into London under the GLC in 1965. However, the post code is RM and phone code 01708. Now those in Newham never consider themselves as Essex on any level. Whereas many in Havering including the morons at the council still believe they are Essex. If people don't accept the change in 1965, why do they accept the changes from 1889 or earlier Acts? Far as i'm concerned, if you live in a London Borough, your in London. This will apply to 99.9% of people. Funny enough, where i use to live in Manor Park E12, part of MP is now in Redbridge rather than Newham!
+JFKisnotdead Love this! Great isn't it? how it causes debate and discussing and people preferring to stick to how it was! we're all human and all like that to some extent. Hope you enjoyed the video...
It isn’t official, but there are many organisations which use it as the London boundary for “official” things. Personally I consider anywhere contained by the M25 (with Dartford Crossing) to be inside London.
@@fetchstixRHD And what you personally consider is not official. If you can not vote in the London Mayor elections, you are not officially a Londoner. Sorry.
I'm in Havering. I qualify for a resident's Oyster card. I live near a bus garage that has red buses. I am 20-30 minutes away from a Tube station (depending on the bus I get), which runs trains directly into the centre of London. And my hometown's mainline National Rail station will soon be a Crossrail station. To all intents and purposes, I am in London. (Also, in my experience, girls from the continent and North America find you much more attractive if you tell them you're from London rather than plain old Essex. So there's that.)
Chalfont & Latimer is my local tube station so I'm one of those on the tube but not living in London. For a faster journey into London i usually travel from Gerrards Cross on the Chiltern Main Line.
Any address where a UK citizen if living there would be entitled to vote in London Mayoral Elections would mean you are living at an address that is administravely regarded as being in London.
@@cipherrephicsamplename554 The City Of London is a separate city altogether from London, and has been since Medieval times (or possibly Roman, I can't remember). With it's own council, tax system, and administration separate from Greater London and it's boroughs.
+sbaker190189 Agreed, once someone looked at me at Epsom station like I was crazy because I tried to use an Oyster card and I thought they were crazy for not joining the 21st century.
Possibly because someone thought leaving Epsom Downs on its own at the end of a branch line without access to Oyster would cause more problems than it solved? Or, if it's historical, they thought leaving it out of zone 6 would lead to more fare evasion (and hence loss) than it would cost to include it?
Epsom isnt in the oyster fare zone because GTR & First/MTR want to catch fare evaders travelling to ewell east/west when theres no ticket barriers there & also because thier assholes trying to make more money most likely
I thought the train operators had a plan to change that? Especially seeing that stations like Cheshunt and Dartford, and even more “exotic” locations, it seems questionable that they haven’t made any progress.
I think you can usually tell if someone/yourself lives in London by how certain areas of the city are referred to. If someone talks about ‘the West End’, ‘going up west’, ‘the City’ used correctly) or specific areas, such as ‘we went to Fitzrovia’ as opposed to ‘we went into London’ or even ‘we went to central London’, then they are probably actually from London.
You live in London if are within those boroughs, who cares about the postcode or the 020 or the tube map or anything else. Those boroughs make Greater London which is basically London.
In 1965 wallington and beddington became part of Sutton and left Surrey and is now part of Greater London, not many people know that or realise that Greater London is a ceremonial county same as Surrey. 54 years on people still argue that its Surrey even thou we have metropolitan police, the signs say "London borough of......", and that the LEZ (low emission zone) runs all the way down to coulsdon. I hear people going on about the low emission zone is gonna come as far Croydon soon. It already has and has been for years, just doesn't affect cars like the ULEZ does, only affects lorries and buses.
There WERE NE and S postcodes in London. They were merged with neighbouring areas in 1866/8. The letters were then free for Newcastle and Sheffield to use when the Letter/number system was rolled out countrywide.
I usually do it out of convenience just when I'm abroad. When I get the old 'where are you from?' question from a non-UK person I will say London. They've probably never heard of Watford. That's changing a bit now as we've become more recognisable through our football team.
redwest Watford isn’t London at all tho it’s a completely separate town. Watch Jay Foreman’s video ‘Where does London end’ he talks about that in order to live in London, you have to be in the Greater London boundary.
I live in Barking and Dagenham but some say it's Essex. On the address it says Essex but I'm still within Barking and Dagenham which is inside the m25, the greater London boundary, zone 5 and the 020 yet it is always mentioned as Essex. I'm so confused. Help plz. I don't know what to call it
Barking and Dagenham is part of London. Prior to 1965 though it didn't used to be, which is why it still gets referred to as 'Essex'. But it's not, it's now part of Greater London.
More confusion! The head office of Surrey County Council still sits within the Royal London Borough of Kingston, though it does not govern the towns within Kingston Borough, such as Kingston, Surbiton and New Malden - Kingston has its own London borough council. It is what is termed as an extraterritorial County office and actually governs the neighbouring 'Surrey County' boroughs of Elmbridge, Epsom & Ewell etc which include the towns of Esher, Weybridge, Epsom... By rights Guildford is the modern day principal town of Surrey County and arguably the true location for the modern day head office. Plenty of other oddities across Greater London - Surrey County Cricket located near Vauxhall, London with Vauxhall once being part of Surrey. Easiest way to get your head around it all ? If you live within one of the 32/(33) London boroughs (City included) you are politically and administratively part of London.
Waltham Abbey is a fun one. It straddles the M25. It has an Enfield postcode (EN9). Its in the Epping district (which has a tube station). But it’s in Essex - so not ‘in’ London.
020 (as Geoff mentions in the video). Although 0181 and 0171 were turned into 020 numbers prefixed with 8 and 7 respectively, new London 020 numbers beginning 8 and 7, and later even 3, were issued in any part of London, inner or outer. As for Sutton, rail tickets call it "Sutton London" whereas the customer information systems tend to display it as Sutton (Surrey). Very confusing! The fact that your council was called the London Borough of Sutton didn't make you feel like a Londoner?
Dude it gets confusing when friends from literally neighbouring towns across the border into Surrey say you're from London or when we go into a town like Kingston they say we're going to London. I'm like bro, when you say going to London that means going to central. 😂 I just say I'm from both London/Surrey.
But Geoff the bus line 775 goes from Croydon to Reading & is a London bus & it goes via old coulsdon so your saying that Reading is in London when actually it's not & the 465 from Kingston to Dorking.
its because the LONDON postcode's where ruffly the original boundary of London in the 1900's. When they expanded London to include parts of Surrey (Croydon, Kingston), Middlesex (Hounslow, Twickenham), Hertfordshire, Essex etc. The royal mail couldn't be asked to change all the new towns to a London postcode as it was cost a lot. Hence why we have Hounslow TW3 Middlesex and Kingston-upon-Thames KT1
@@aperson2330 You say it as if it's a trivial thing. Class distinctions and mass migration (form one district to another) have been based on postcodes ever since they were invented. Sometimes *because* they were invented, where no such distinctions were made in the area before.
0:30 google does not follow OS mapping practices. they follow german-derived mapping practices. If you want blue motorways, make your own map using OSM data.
as an australian i lived in south kensington early 1972 and then later in 1972 and to late 1973 in streatham hill. i considered as most would i'm sure that i lived in london.
Anonymous Ghost it was until 1965 like all of the London boroughs east of the river lea. My Nan was born in West Ham Essex, I was born in London. Every part of London has been in another county at some point 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
I live in Hayes and Harlington. Although its in Hillingdon, has an 020 number, within the m25 and within zone 6 a lot of Londeners I've met don't consider it London mostly because it's not on the tube map and they've never heard of it. people's perceptions of it will change with the cross rail going through it now I guess...
What about Gatwick airport? Any idea why it's "London Gatwick" yet it's about 25 miles south of Central London & well outside the M25. As a Gatwick local I've often wondered.
+mattvjmeasures because it's part of the London air system. Air systems are generally categorised by metropolitan areas (the major city in a wider region). Amsterdam Schiphol isn't in Amsterdam, Paris Charles de Gaulle isn't in Paris, London Gatwick isn't in London (and so on) but they're all part of their respective city's air system.
+mattvjmeasures how far from the city it allegedly serves can an airport be? Both southend and luton call themselves London airports but I would not like to walk from either to wherever you call the city boundary
MORDEN: London Borough ✅ 020 Phone No ✅ Inside M25 ✅ Inside Zone 6 ✅ London Postcode ❎ However if you walk 10-20 mins from the town centre you reach a SW19 or SW20
Something that's always confused me is that London's airports are London Heathrow, London Gatwick, London Stansted and London City. LHR and LCY are within the Greater London boundaries, with LGW and STN close but not quite in London. I wonder why they're called London airports when they're not technically part of London? Anecdotally my favourite statement has to be when I flew an American carrier from Atlanta to Manchester. As we were taxiing out fron ATL we were told "welcome to this flight from Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta, taking you all the way to Manchester Airport, just outside London." Some of the Mancunians on the plane looked somewhat confused and/or offended.
John Saunders if you are part of a London borough, then you are part of London. Epsom (for example) is not in a London borough, therefore not in greater London. Also why mention Weybridge, you could not get more Surrey than private areas and mansions there
As a kid I always thought I just lived in “Greater London” and that LONDON London was just central London. I live in the middle of Camden… practically in the middle of London😂. Also I don’t think the word London has ever been used so much in 2 sentences.
Stations in Zones 7, 8 and 9 are in Hertfordshire as well as Buckinghamshire. in fact, you travel through Hertfordshire first before you get to the Buckinghamshire stations.
+MC Grindah County names never had anything to do with postcodes. Postcodes are to sort post into the nearest sorting facility only. Lot's of the country has a postcode that doesn't correspond to county boundaries.
No Kingston is in the Royal (London) Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames. Kingston has a postcode of KT1,KT2 and part in SW15. The Kingston post town (KINGSTON-UPON-THAMES) on the mail is just what you put down. Part of Hampton on the other side of the river is KT1 Kingston.
All quite confusing, though as a general rule for Kingston postcodes: KT1 to KT6 are technically in London. KT7 onward are in Surrey. Some exceptions within KT6 would include Long Ditton (Surrey) though generally the KT6 postcode corresponds to Surbiton (Greater London) A fine line!
You no longer have to include counties in official postal addresses, just the Post Town and the Post Code. When it comes to places like Richmond, Kingston, Surbiton, Sutton, Morden, Mitcham, and Croydon they are now all in Greater London and are administered as such, not having been in Surrey since the mid 1960's. Strangly enough though, Surrey County Council's main administration offices are now extra terrestial still being in Kingston Greater London. A hangover from the days when Kingson was actually in Surrey.
as someone who's grown up in a part of zone 2 very CLOSE to zone 1 (one stop away in fact) and has an 0207 number, I am very much the most London of the comment section - south London always 💖
There was a time that Shakespeare's Globe was out of London. So, maybe one day Brighton will be a London borough. Who knows? Maybe even Calais will be London.
London Borough of Brighton and Hove? That's why we have the green belt to stop that happening. I know that Brighton is sometimes referred to as Earls Court-on-sea.
Iam Londoner the greatest city in the world and at the same time where the change starred from.So we as Londoner are saying we welcome you with open heart's to this great city and its Wonders and I know that you will come back again and again and again with amazement.
I live in Kent but Bromley comes under Kent which has a BR postcode but yet has London buses same in Erith DA postcode with London buses so I refer to being in London if you have an official London postcode
I would like to point out the St Albans is not London. St Albans is in the countryside in Hertfordshire. I notice that whenever people from St Albans come to London, they always say they are Londoners even when they are not. I have the idea that people from St Albans deliberately call themselves Londoners because they think it makes them cool.
you're talking shit im from hertfordshire and no one whos from st albans would try to make the claim that st albans is in london. its an entirely separate city
Here’s the deal, if your inside the M25 you’re in the London region. Anything outside is not. If you live in the London boroughs then you’re in London with the exception of non M25 zones. Proper London is where the postcodes are. So Kingston is in London but not proper London and St Albans is not in London at all
John Saunders By proper London I mean near the centre or what people associate with London. If you were to take a tourist to London and then take them to Weybridge or Dartford, would they think they’re in London? No. Yes I mean technically it’s in London but proper London is where the postcodes start
I remember my Nan telling me that her mother - who was born in Westminster and latterly lived in Marylebone/St Pancras - didn't consider Camden Town to be London: out in the sticks!
Here in America, the US, I consider London as that city. It never dawns on us that London proper is the ancient city, and London, modern, is the city built up around that ancient city.
I have a rather similar set of problems, but on the semi-official level, not one of personal opinion. I live in the NY borough of Queens. My neighborhood is called Ridgewood. next to us is a neighborhood called Glendale. Problem #1 is there is no official border between the two because we share a single Zip code (US equivalent of a postal code). So there is an entire area where the two meet, surrounded on three sides by train tracks, that no one can agree where it is. Because the post office for the shared code considers itself Ridgewood, you can use Ridgewood to send mail to someone in Glendale (and watch them get pissed off about it) Even worse is problem #2. The United States Postal Service has divided the city in such a way that Queens is made up of five "Postal Towns." Mail sent to New York, New York only goes to Manhattan. The Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island get to use their names, while as far as the Post Office cares, Queens doesn't exist. This can be considered somewhat practical because street names often repeat. For example, each borough has a "Broadway". The Manhattan one continues into the Bronx, but Brooklyn Queens and Staten Island each have a distinct street with that name. The postal town is named after the area where it's main post office is. In my case, that would be Flushing, which is several miles north east from me.So as far as the United States Postal service cares, I can be said to live in Ridgewood, NY, or Flushing NY, but not Queens NY or NY, NY.
+Londonist Ltd want something really strange? I went to high school in a neighborhood the post office made up!"Yea, you folks over near LaGuardia Airport? You now live in East Elmhurst" "But we're nowhere near Elmhurst!""too bad, that's what we're calling you now""Why can't we be North Jackson Heights, or East Corona or West Astoria? Oh, Got it, they used to call this area 'Trains Meadow', how about that?""Our mind is made up, East Elmhurst it is"And I left one thing out from my first post. My issues with my neighborhood are relatively recent. Before I was born, it was even worse. My family has lived in this area for a long time and even up the time my parents were dating, Ridgewood and Glendale had Brooklyn zip codes, even though they weren't in Brooklyn. Imagine the some random person from the Royal Mail knocking on your office door and saying "hi Londonist, love your work, By the way, all you mail has to say you're in Hackney, even though we know you're in Islington." If I got that backwards, I'm sorry, can't find a detailed enough map, but you get the idea.
Ahh good old NYC trivia, enjoyed this a lot, as i hail originally from Flushing NY (proper flushing, e.g, northern & parsons).. Then i moved to Brooklyn (heights to be exact), and was always confused why my mailing address that went from the town-name, now referred to an entire boro.. thanks for clarifying the reasoning behind that.. i think a large amount of that discombobulation comes from the fact that you may have unintentionally glossed over that, i believe each of the boroughs used to be their own "cities", with Manhattan (what people think of when they think, new york, proper) and Brooklyn, having been the first and third largest cities in the country at the time. It was with the building of the brooklyn bridge that marked the unification of the boroughs in 1883 and from then on it was called one 'New York City'. If you'd like to learn more about NYC history, there's a great PBS documentary film directed by Ric Burns, you can find it also on youtube for the curious.
Funny how a lot of people don't realize NYC is more than just Manhattan, it's actually made of the 5 boroughs: Manhattan and Staten island (worlds apart lifestyle wise) being the only actual islands, with Brooklyn and Queens on the larger Long Island (made up of also non-NYC Nassau and Suffolk counties), and finally the boogie down Bronx, which actually is the only part of NYC to be on the mainland of the USA (and it was named after an old large land owned by John Bronck, bordered by a river, dubbed Bronck's River, and just shorted to Bronx some time later). p.s.. i now live in London actually, so i am thankful to be able to learn about the history here now as well! :-D
According to 4/5 of those criteria I live in London, so I'm gonna go with yes (despite what some of my pedantic friends might say - damn not having a London postcode!)
@Deesar Thafaks Well, who could possibly argue with such a cogent, lucid, tightly argued and comprehensive response? I bow in awe to whatever point you think that you are making.
Some would also consider themselves living in London if they live in a town that isn't in Greater London but is attached to the conurbation area, for example Loughton
Do I live in London? Easy. The answer is no. I live in the Netherlands.
Hai.
FrostyCreeper10 Lo.
Thomas Joosten l.
FrostyCreeper10 You ruined it.
Thomas Joosten lel
Violate a law in your borough and see which city’s police force comes to arrest you. Then you’ll know .
My small village couldn't send out a police officer because someone had stolen a bike on the other side of town.
To be BRUTALLY honest, I would not recommend this. You do you tho
Not necessarily, The Transport Police are National as are other specialist Police.
@@user-ky6vw5up9m Well, if you check the bobbies on the beat, if they are in met or city uniform, you are in london.
There's The Metropolitan Police , the City of London Police or the British Transport Police . You could be 'done' by all 3 under certain conditions.😀
Snapchat might help, if the london filter comes up then you're in london right?
Smart man haha
You'd be surprised. I've had it come up in Lakeside in Essex, Luton in Bedfordshire and Reigate in Surrey.
no because the london geofilter is constructed off the M25 which areas like watford are in but is not in a london borough.
No it comes up in the other home counties like kent, west sussex, surrey, essex, herts, berks, bucks and beds
Come up as London when I’ve been at Blue Water before
Why are you making it a matter of opinion?? IF YOU LIVE IN ONE OF THE LONDON BOROUGHS, THEN YOU LIVE IN LONDON. If you live outside, keep dreaming.
I agree 100%
Also I think if you live in a Greater London Boroughs that border other counties or have addresses that still have the name of the old county the town/borough used to be in, you can say you're from said county. E.g. If you're from Sutton/Kingston/(South) Croydon you can say you are from Surrey, if you're from Bromley you can say you are from Kent, if you are from Havering or Barking you can say Essex or if you are from Hillingdon you could say Middlesex. It sounds kinda cool to say to someone who lives in like Zone 1 that you're from the "outskirts".
Chi-Yin and William: chilliam00 yh I live in Mottingham which is in bromely, and ive always said / been told that i live on the "out skirts"
No Royal Mail postal address at all has a county in it. Counties have not been part of the postal address in the UK since 1996. Anyone who uses a county as part of their address is wrong to do so.
HONESTLY
I live in France. I'm French. I've never lived in London, but fell in love with it ever since the first time I visited. I love everything about it, and visit as often as time and budget allow. I really, really consider myself a Londoner when I'm there. Perhaps that doesn't make sense, but London is home to me, as much as any home as ever felt. So, if home is where the heart is, I don't live in London, but London definitely is my home.
I feel much the same way, and I live even farther away (in Turkey), but visit whenever I can.
If you are able to vote for the Mayor of London, then you live in London.
So City of London isn't London?
@@ciscocastello3561 no.
Cisco Castello no
technically no!
What about children?
As a south Londoner I resent North London high horsers defining london with the tube map. Clearly never been to streatham.
+Ruben Green I went to St reathem once and could not get out quick enough. north London does not think it is better we KNOW IT
+james brown on the way to Streatham I passed nice houses. But the place needs an upgrade.
Everything you just said is stupid
Elephant and castle area is proper trampy
North > South. Always.
My nearest tube station in Athens is in the zone 648294638284629 according to the London Underground
yep living in telford i live in zone 123 of the fare scheme thing (also a joke, in reality it stops in zone 9)
I live in Berlin so... No I don't live in London.
I live near London but have been to Berlin. You live in a wonderful city and I will hopefully go back some day
+James Christmas thx mate btw nice name :)
+Siemens 407 I flew back from Berlin to London in just 90 minutes earlier this month. That's quicker than some people can get to work on the outskirts of London, so maybe you are technically in London?
+Jonathan Morris hmm... guess you're right
+Siemens 407 I live in Australia so... definitely not London. On the Tube it would be about zone 10000.
Does anyone know if California is in London ?
Kody Steiner It is you dumbo!
No, but Maryland is!
y e s
No. It's in Dartford Kent
I’m pretty sure California is a Continent inside Oceania.
Why am I watching this I live in San Francisco
+Anti Nazi because you love London? :-)
***** Yeah I really do want go there. I will most likely go there for a graduation gift
Tsu i live east of you near oakland. Wtf?
Tsu be careful if you ever go east or south London is mostly the ghetto areas. Btw i live in North London.
Actually north London is not as nice as some places in east or south London.
It's pretty simple. You live in London if you live in one of the London Boroughs. I live in Hampton Court, Elmbridge, Surrey, with a KT postcode, literally two minutes walk away from London (Richmond borough) across Hampton Court Bridge. My station is in zone 6. I have an 020 telephone number. But I don't live in London, I live in Elmbridge, Surrey. Simple.
I grew up in Bexley, Kent according to my postal address with a DA5 post code. But Bexley is a London borough and Bexley is within it.
I think it also depends on how you view it. E.g. I live in a London borough that borders Surrey. So I could equally say I am from Surrey yet also be from London (since historically that borough would've been in Surrey. I usually describe to people who live closer to central London as living in Surrey/Greater London but most people I know from parts further out in Surrey would say I am from London? o_O
East Molesey, Elmbridge, Surrey one side of the bridge - Hampton Court and Hampton, London Borough of Richmond the other side. Confusingly Hampton Court station is located on the Surrey side. Many anomalies along the London/Surrey boundaries. Another major one - the head office of Surrey County Council seated in Kingston is actually extraterritorial and does not govern Kingston borough, but does govern neighbouring Elmbridge, Epsom & Ewell etc.
Technecly yes i live in reading so when thats on the tube map im in london
How is that simple in any way
watford is in hertfordshire not buckinghamshire
You're correct
Watford is in buckinghamshire, enfield town and cheshunt are in hertfordshire
Jack Vincent my mistake sorry
RobloxMaster009 also Enfield town is in greater london
Same place
SInce I'm in Toronto Canada . I'll Say no. But from your map London is getting so big that maybe I should reconsider if I am in London or not
hahahhahahha
qᵔ╭͜ʖ╮ᵔp
How far are you from London (Ontario, not UK)?
@@TIMBOWERMAN Not very!
Finally, a video that answers my year-long question of "what are the boundaries for London, and what is classed as London?". Good video 👍🏽
I grew up in Bexley - Address was blah blah blah, Bexley, Kent, DA5 ... And my phone code was 0322 for Crayford. Bexley is a London Borough and the border with Kent was 100 yards or so across the road. Confused the hell out of the schools, council etc.
yep i deffo live in london im in all the zones what londonist pointed out
+Luke Atkinson Same here! Woo - proper London, haha!
Lol
+Luke Atkinson You're in all the zones THAT Londonist pointed out. You clearly are a Londoner. :)
Yep was born and raised in london for 22 years now :)
+Luke Atkinson Youre still being raised at 22?
I live in the London Borough of Bexley but my postal address ends Kent with a DA1 postcode Which is Dartford, Kent.
London Boroughs came into existence with the formation of the GLC Greater London Council. A lot of towns in a London Borough still use their old county names in their address.
Many folks from Bexley also don’t consider themselves Londoners. I went to sixth form there.
How people describe themselves and where they go tells you a lot.
Im from south east London, so Bexley is Kent - part of the outskirts, but still Kent.
There were boroughs within the old London County Council (the GLC's predecessor), although they had different boundaries from the current boroughs.
hannah - It's a similar story where I was born (Romford) and raised (Hornchurch). If you go to those places and talk to people of my age group (mid-50s), they'll mostly tell you that they're Essex (as I certainly would), even though the London Borough of Havering has existed for nearly 55 years. If you ask them where their parents came from, it'll more than likely be somewhere in or very near the East End.
hannah60000 the mistake people make is putting the historic county in the address causes confusion to people 🤣 the correct format is without county, they are delivery instructions no more.
Post code relates ONLY to where your mail sorting office is, nothing to do with what county you're in. Bexley (and the borough of Bexley) are London, and defined as such when stating the population of London. People are stupid.
I live in SE London, so yes I live in London. I also have an 020 telephone number, so I really do live in London! Geoff nice to see that you used the correct code for London's telephone numbers... 020!
+CJT80 Thanks! London is very much ''020' and not '0207' or '0208' - we will at somepoint do another video JUST about that, actually.
***** Oh really? Excellent I will look forward to checking that out :D
+Londonist Ltd Look forward to that. I'm old enough to remember 01 for London, then 071 &081, then 0171 & 0181, and now 020.
My work number begins 020 3xxx xxxx, which confuses some people.
Ah yes the 020 3xxx xxxx numbers, I have one myself.... confuses a few people, but mine is VOIP so wherever I go it can go with me :-)
This is rubbish. There is no confusion, London is anywhere which falls under one of the 32 boroughs
The red boundary
axiomatic22 it shouldn't be, it's not london, but parts of the Home Counties
Jake Deane No, you are officially in London if you live inside the boroughs
Alright then - I live outside the postal codes on the border of the boroughs within the telephone code area within the m25 and next to the busiest airport
Completely agree! Just type your respective town into the BBC Weather app for immediate confirmation. 33 boroughs if you include The City. :-)
Another definition is the Oyster card zone (not just the Tube map), which can be used on National Rail so definitely extends out of London and the M25
+Geofftech Yes I live in London and I love London.
Then Shenfield and Gatwick count as London XD
Yeah I live in Shenfield sure as hell don't live in London although I do love it
I live in a tiny village miles outside London postcodes, right on the edge of the borough boundary, right on the edge of 020, right on the edge of zone 6, fairly close to the M25. From the map, it's pretty obvious where I live, given those facts. I consider it factually Greater London (because I'm technically inside all of those) but very much a kind of 'Inner Surrey' due to being 10 minutes walk away from farms, fields and sparsely built-upon land... which is factually in Surrey. The only thing that makes my area London-adjacent is the Roman road into London that passes through. Lots of traffic, but that's about it. Local church has been around since the 7th century, and all the manor houses and barns and such are still standing. There's even the village green that doesn't look like it'll ever become an office block.
Yes, I live in London, and my local station is in Havering in Zone 6, right near the end of the District Line
The local government changes of 1965 did not take Havering out of the County of Essex, only from under the administration of Essex County Council. Havering is still Essex and the majority of residents would agree
I live in Cambridge. I live in London because I am in the "Greater London Commuting Areas" which is ridiculously large (and can stretch as far as Southend as well).
I'm always amused by the different reactions depending where people come from.
I was bought up in Newham which until 1965 was in Essex under the old boroughs of East Ham and West Ham. Both areas have a E postcode and a 020 phone code.
I now live in Havering which like Newham was created in 1965 when transferred into London under the GLC in 1965. However, the post code is RM and phone code 01708.
Now those in Newham never consider themselves as Essex on any level. Whereas many in Havering including the morons at the council still believe they are Essex.
If people don't accept the change in 1965, why do they accept the changes from 1889 or earlier Acts?
Far as i'm concerned, if you live in a London Borough, your in London. This will apply to 99.9% of people.
Funny enough, where i use to live in Manor Park E12, part of MP is now in Redbridge rather than Newham!
+JFKisnotdead Love this! Great isn't it? how it causes debate and discussing and people preferring to stick to how it was! we're all human and all like that to some extent. Hope you enjoyed the video...
Damn, I was always brought up under the impression that the M25 rule was official. This vid shattered my world...
It isn’t official, but there are many organisations which use it as the London boundary for “official” things. Personally I consider anywhere contained by the M25 (with Dartford Crossing) to be inside London.
@@fetchstixRHD And what you personally consider is not official. If you can not vote in the London Mayor elections, you are not officially a Londoner. Sorry.
The M25 in this neck of the woods runs through Surrey. The locals would be very annoyed if some little squirt tried to incorporate them into London.
I'm in Havering. I qualify for a resident's Oyster card. I live near a bus garage that has red buses. I am 20-30 minutes away from a Tube station (depending on the bus I get), which runs trains directly into the centre of London. And my hometown's mainline National Rail station will soon be a Crossrail station.
To all intents and purposes, I am in London.
(Also, in my experience, girls from the continent and North America find you much more attractive if you tell them you're from London rather than plain old Essex. So there's that.)
Chalfont & Latimer is my local tube station so I'm one of those on the tube but not living in London. For a faster journey into London i usually travel from Gerrards Cross on the Chiltern Main Line.
Any address where a UK citizen if living there would be entitled to vote in London Mayoral Elections would mean you are living at an address that is administravely regarded as being in London.
so the city of london isn't in london? interesting take.
@@cipherrephicsamplename554 The City Of London is a separate city altogether from London, and has been since Medieval times (or possibly Roman, I can't remember). With it's own council, tax system, and administration separate from Greater London and it's boroughs.
Im within all the boundaries mentioned so yes
here's a question for Geoff, why is it that you can get to Epsom Downs on an Oyster card and yet it's a different story for Epsom itself?
+sbaker190189 Agreed, once someone looked at me at Epsom station like I was crazy because I tried to use an Oyster card and I thought they were crazy for not joining the 21st century.
+LifesEagle lol yh I live in Epsom and it so annoying not being zone 6. Have to travel to ewell West to use my oyster on the train.
Possibly because someone thought leaving Epsom Downs on its own at the end of a branch line without access to Oyster would cause more problems than it solved? Or, if it's historical, they thought leaving it out of zone 6 would lead to more fare evasion (and hence loss) than it would cost to include it?
Epsom isnt in the oyster fare zone because GTR & First/MTR want to catch fare evaders travelling to ewell east/west when theres no ticket barriers there & also because thier assholes trying to make more money most likely
I thought the train operators had a plan to change that? Especially seeing that stations like Cheshunt and Dartford, and even more “exotic” locations, it seems questionable that they haven’t made any progress.
I think you can usually tell if someone/yourself lives in London by how certain areas of the city are referred to. If someone talks about ‘the West End’, ‘going up west’, ‘the City’ used correctly) or specific areas, such as ‘we went to Fitzrovia’ as opposed to ‘we went into London’ or even ‘we went to central London’, then they are probably actually from London.
You live in London if are within those boroughs, who cares about the postcode or the 020 or the tube map or anything else. Those boroughs make Greater London which is basically London.
It's nothing to agree or disagree on it's a fact
John Saunders
Aha your agenda is revealed.
Those places you mentioned aren’t part of London, because they’re not London. 😂
Postcodes win!
In 1965 wallington and beddington became part of Sutton and left Surrey and is now part of Greater London, not many people know that or realise that Greater London is a ceremonial county same as Surrey. 54 years on people still argue that its Surrey even thou we have metropolitan police, the signs say "London borough of......", and that the LEZ (low emission zone) runs all the way down to coulsdon. I hear people going on about the low emission zone is gonna come as far Croydon soon. It already has and has been for years, just doesn't affect cars like the ULEZ does, only affects lorries and buses.
Well now we're at the point where the ULEZ _is_ gonna come all the way out to Coulsdon and Old Coulsdon as well
well its an easy answer for me because i dont even live in the UK
Same
I don't even live in Europe so I don't live in London
Donovan lane There are places in other continents called London
I live in Cockfosters, North London in both the London Borough of Enfield and the London Borough of Barnet and the postcode is EN4.
Geoff, we need a video explaining why there is no NE or S postcode! That's been bugging me ever since I moved to London nine years ago!
S was already in use in Sheffield! Not sure about NE though :)
NE is for Newcastle.
There WERE NE and S postcodes in London.
They were merged with neighbouring areas in 1866/8.
The letters were then free for Newcastle and Sheffield to use when the Letter/number system was rolled out countrywide.
1:30 And now Shenfield, Essex (33 miles from Charing Cross!)! And Reading, Berkshire (41 miles from Charing Cross!)!
I wish that this was longer, it was really interesting
the most annoying thing when people from Watford and surrounding areas say they're from London... no, just no!
I usually do it out of convenience just when I'm abroad. When I get the old 'where are you from?' question from a non-UK person I will say London. They've probably never heard of Watford. That's changing a bit now as we've become more recognisable through our football team.
redwest Watford isn’t London at all tho it’s a completely separate town. Watch Jay Foreman’s video ‘Where does London end’ he talks about that in order to live in London, you have to be in the Greater London boundary.
Sunny MANGO I don’t get why people have made this so complicated. All you gotta do is look at the fucking map of London
I live in Barking and Dagenham but some say it's Essex. On the address it says Essex but I'm still within Barking and Dagenham which is inside the m25, the greater London boundary, zone 5 and the 020 yet it is always mentioned as Essex. I'm so confused. Help plz. I don't know what to call it
Barking and Dagenham is part of London. Prior to 1965 though it didn't used to be, which is why it still gets referred to as 'Essex'. But it's not, it's now part of Greater London.
+Londonist Ltd funny how people in zone 6 can still be inside greater london. also why wont the council let epping become zone 7?
+Donald Trump Shut your face!
+Elevating Europe no make me
Barking and Dagenham might be technically part of London, it certainly doesn't feel London.
More confusion! The head office of Surrey County Council still sits within the Royal London Borough of Kingston, though it does not govern the towns within Kingston Borough, such as Kingston, Surbiton and New Malden - Kingston has its own London borough council. It is what is termed as an extraterritorial County office and actually governs the neighbouring 'Surrey County' boroughs of Elmbridge, Epsom & Ewell etc which include the towns of Esher, Weybridge, Epsom... By rights Guildford is the modern day principal town of Surrey County and arguably the true location for the modern day head office. Plenty of other oddities across Greater London - Surrey County Cricket located near Vauxhall, London with Vauxhall once being part of Surrey. Easiest way to get your head around it all ? If you live within one of the 32/(33) London boroughs (City included) you are politically and administratively part of London.
I live in Essex so no I do not. However if you live in a London borough then yes you do in fact live in london.
Waltham Abbey is a fun one. It straddles the M25. It has an Enfield postcode (EN9). Its in the Epping district (which has a tube station). But it’s in Essex - so not ‘in’ London.
When I lived in Sutton I always considered myself to live in Surrey, despite having an 0208 number.
020 (as Geoff mentions in the video). Although 0181 and 0171 were turned into 020 numbers prefixed with 8 and 7 respectively, new London 020 numbers beginning 8 and 7, and later even 3, were issued in any part of London, inner or outer.
As for Sutton, rail tickets call it "Sutton London" whereas the customer information systems tend to display it as Sutton (Surrey). Very confusing!
The fact that your council was called the London Borough of Sutton didn't make you feel like a Londoner?
What's weird is how surrey county council are based in kingston when it's no longer in surrey.
Dude it gets confusing when friends from literally neighbouring towns across the border into Surrey say you're from London or when we go into a town like Kingston they say we're going to London. I'm like bro, when you say going to London that means going to central. 😂 I just say I'm from both London/Surrey.
if you lived in Sutton pre 65 ,yes you lived in Surrey ,if after 65 you lived in London ,its not up for debate ,its just fact ,the boundarys changed
Sutton is literally the London borough of Sutton
Do I live in London? No I live in the United States and yet I'm still obsessed with the londonist/ Geoff videos on London and the underground
Do I live in London? Easy. The answer is no. I live in Indonesia.
Jolly Frankle You copied that comment from the Netherlands guy.
Answer: Pause at around 1:47 and draw the outline
If you living in one of the London boroughs then yes, you do live in London .
0:39 There's a countryside by Havering, so the part of Havering that is outside of the Orbital Motorway is Havering's countryside.
When I see the red buses in Watford that's when I I think when I am in London
I mean the London red buses
But Geoff the bus line 775 goes from Croydon to Reading & is a London bus & it goes via old coulsdon so your saying that Reading is in London when actually it's not & the 465 from Kingston to Dorking.
Atleast buses in Norfolk/Suffolk are white and purple
RunrigFan
Epsom doesn't have a London postcode! KT4 or whatever is not a London postcode but a surrey one.
its because the LONDON postcode's where ruffly the original boundary of London in the 1900's. When they expanded London to include parts of Surrey (Croydon, Kingston), Middlesex (Hounslow, Twickenham), Hertfordshire, Essex etc. The royal mail couldn't be asked to change all the new towns to a London postcode as it was cost a lot. Hence why we have Hounslow TW3 Middlesex and Kingston-upon-Thames KT1
Ah man, you have just left us with more questions than answers!!
Hang on, doesn't the postcode E4 for Chingford cross into Essex for the village of Sewardstone?
yep, but a postcode is a postcode, nothing more, nothing less.
@@aperson2330 You say it as if it's a trivial thing. Class distinctions and mass migration (form one district to another) have been based on postcodes ever since they were invented. Sometimes *because* they were invented, where no such distinctions were made in the area before.
Another definition you could use is the area encircled by the Metropolitan Green Belt
"You are considered London if your local tube station is on the map"
Laughs in south london
PGATPlays Minecraft no some are in Bucks and Essex
@@user-ky6vw5up9m His point is almost no tube statio is south of the river. Even those places "in London".
0:30 google does not follow OS mapping practices. they follow german-derived mapping practices. If you want blue motorways, make your own map using OSM data.
Southwark mate. South of the river rules!
E. Reynolds you north lot are so deluded 😂
Yessss Southwark!!!!
Jay Foreman in unfinished london episode 2: *Why is North London better than South London?*
as an australian i lived in south kensington early 1972 and then later in 1972 and to late 1973 in streatham hill.
i considered as most would i'm sure that i lived in london.
I live in London the EAST I live in Leyton wich use to be in Essex.
VolvoTrident no it didn't
It did used to be Essex in the 1960's.
Anonymous Ghost it was until 1965 like all of the London boroughs east of the river lea. My Nan was born in West Ham Essex, I was born in London. Every part of London has been in another county at some point 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
I live in Hayes and Harlington. Although its in Hillingdon, has an 020 number, within the m25 and within zone 6 a lot of Londeners I've met don't consider it London mostly because it's not on the tube map and they've never heard of it. people's perceptions of it will change with the cross rail going through it now I guess...
What about Gatwick airport? Any idea why it's "London Gatwick" yet it's about 25 miles south of Central London & well outside the M25. As a Gatwick local I've often wondered.
See also London Luton. And Paris Beauvais. Just Ryanair tricking people.
+mattvjmeasures And London Oxford Airport...about 55 miles from London
+mattvjmeasures because it's part of the London air system. Air systems are generally categorised by metropolitan areas (the major city in a wider region). Amsterdam Schiphol isn't in Amsterdam, Paris Charles de Gaulle isn't in Paris, London Gatwick isn't in London (and so on) but they're all part of their respective city's air system.
+mattvjmeasures how far from the city it allegedly serves can an airport be? Both southend and luton call themselves London airports but I would not like to walk from either to wherever you call the city boundary
Thanks for the info SkyscraperCityLondon
MORDEN:
London Borough ✅
020 Phone No ✅
Inside M25 ✅
Inside Zone 6 ✅
London Postcode ❎
However if you walk 10-20 mins from the town centre you reach a SW19 or SW20
If you live in a London Borough you automatically have a London postcode due to the fact it's in London.
@@meesaye1826 I had a Surrey postcode of SM4 - London postcodes SW19 and SW20 weren't far away
Sutton SM1, yup its London
I definitely don't live in London, I live in Northamptonshire
Just wait a few years ...
Same
Same
Me too of Finedon uk Northamptonshire
Dylan Lewis-Creser good lord, it’s you 😅
Something that's always confused me is that London's airports are London Heathrow, London Gatwick, London Stansted and London City. LHR and LCY are within the Greater London boundaries, with LGW and STN close but not quite in London. I wonder why they're called London airports when they're not technically part of London?
Anecdotally my favourite statement has to be when I flew an American carrier from Atlanta to Manchester. As we were taxiing out fron ATL we were told "welcome to this flight from Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta, taking you all the way to Manchester Airport, just outside London."
Some of the Mancunians on the plane looked somewhat confused and/or offended.
Heathrow wouldn't even be part of London before 1965
If you live within Greater London, you live in London! If u don’t live in Greater London, you don’t live in London!!!
John Saunders if you are part of a London borough, then you are part of London. Epsom (for example) is not in a London borough, therefore not in greater London. Also why mention Weybridge, you could not get more Surrey than private areas and mansions there
1:25 still using 2006 tube map, with East London Line but no Terminal 5.
As a kid I always thought I just lived in “Greater London” and that LONDON London was just central London. I live in the middle of Camden… practically in the middle of London😂. Also I don’t think the word London has ever been used so much in 2 sentences.
Same!
Stations in Zones 7, 8 and 9 are in Hertfordshire as well as Buckinghamshire. in fact, you travel through Hertfordshire first before you get to the Buckinghamshire stations.
Well I live in Kingston but all our postcodes say Surrey
Royal Mail are going to delete county names off the system because they are all out of date
+MC Grindah County names never had anything to do with postcodes. Postcodes are to sort post into the nearest sorting facility only. Lot's of the country has a postcode that doesn't correspond to county boundaries.
No Kingston is in the Royal (London) Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames. Kingston has a postcode of KT1,KT2 and part in SW15. The Kingston post town (KINGSTON-UPON-THAMES) on the mail is just what you put down. Part of Hampton on the other side of the river is KT1 Kingston.
All quite confusing, though as a general rule for Kingston postcodes: KT1 to KT6 are technically in London. KT7 onward are in Surrey. Some exceptions within KT6 would include Long Ditton (Surrey) though generally the KT6 postcode corresponds to Surbiton (Greater London) A fine line!
You no longer have to include counties in official postal addresses, just the Post Town and the Post Code. When it comes to places like Richmond, Kingston, Surbiton, Sutton, Morden, Mitcham, and Croydon they are now all in Greater London and are administered as such, not having been in Surrey since the mid 1960's. Strangly enough though, Surrey County Council's main administration offices are now extra terrestial still being in Kingston Greater London. A hangover from the days when Kingson was actually in Surrey.
Do I live in London? Yes I do and a very proud Londoner I am too!
If you live in one of the 32 London boroughs as in it's your local council then you do live in London.
as someone who's grown up in a part of zone 2 very CLOSE to zone 1 (one stop away in fact) and has an 0207 number, I am very much the most London of the comment section - south London always 💖
South London barely exists what you on about. I live in zone 1 north of the Thames
There was a time that Shakespeare's Globe was out of London. So, maybe one day Brighton will be a London borough. Who knows? Maybe even Calais will be London.
London Borough of Brighton and Hove? That's why we have the green belt to stop that happening. I know that Brighton is sometimes referred to as Earls Court-on-sea.
I'm from Dartford Kent so the nearest would be Bexley Heath and Erith. Crayford is like the cross over from London to Kent.
I live near aberdeen, is that close enough?
You know... yeah, that's pretty close
Iam Londoner the greatest city in the world and at the same time where the change starred from.So we as Londoner are saying we welcome you with open heart's to this great city and its Wonders and I know that you will come back again and again and again with amazement.
Ahmed Farah worst city in the world.
The rule everyone uses is the M25. If you live within the M25 you're a Londoner
I live in Kent but Bromley comes under Kent which has a BR postcode but yet has London buses same in Erith DA postcode with London buses so I refer to being in London if you have an official London postcode
I would like to point out the St Albans is not London. St Albans is in the countryside in Hertfordshire. I notice that whenever people from St Albans come to London, they always say they are Londoners even when they are not. I have the idea that people from St Albans deliberately call themselves Londoners because they think it makes them cool.
you're talking shit im from hertfordshire and no one whos from st albans would try to make the claim that st albans is in london. its an entirely separate city
Here’s the deal, if your inside the M25 you’re in the London region. Anything outside is not. If you live in the London boroughs then you’re in London with the exception of non M25 zones. Proper London is where the postcodes are.
So Kingston is in London but not proper London and St Albans is not in London at all
John Saunders By proper London I mean near the centre or what people associate with London. If you were to take a tourist to London and then take them to Weybridge or Dartford, would they think they’re in London? No. Yes I mean technically it’s in London but proper London is where the postcodes start
1:34 Watford is in Hertfordshire not in Buckinghamshire
Postcodes aren't as important as the actual boroughs.
The boroughs are the borders.
Case closed.
Nothing else is as official and important.
Except the borough borders are pretty much arbitrary and just the latest (1965) border change that has been occuring oer hundreds of years.
I remember my Nan telling me that her mother - who was born in Westminster and latterly lived in Marylebone/St Pancras - didn't consider Camden Town to be London: out in the sticks!
Do you live in London? If you are within the Greater London Boundary, yes you do. Simple
No, as that would make places like Stains part of London - it isn’t.
@@hannah60000
No, Staines is not in a London Borough so it wouldn't make it part of London.
Here in America, the US, I consider London as that city. It never dawns on us that London proper is the ancient city, and London, modern, is the city built up around that ancient city.
I have a rather similar set of problems, but on the semi-official level, not one of personal opinion. I live in the NY borough of Queens. My neighborhood is called Ridgewood. next to us is a neighborhood called Glendale. Problem #1 is there is no official border between the two because we share a single Zip code (US equivalent of a postal code). So there is an entire area where the two meet, surrounded on three sides by train tracks, that no one can agree where it is. Because the post office for the shared code considers itself Ridgewood, you can use Ridgewood to send mail to someone in Glendale (and watch them get pissed off about it) Even worse is problem #2. The United States Postal Service has divided the city in such a way that Queens is made up of five "Postal Towns." Mail sent to New York, New York only goes to Manhattan. The Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island get to use their names, while as far as the Post Office cares, Queens doesn't exist. This can be considered somewhat practical because street names often repeat. For example, each borough has a "Broadway". The Manhattan one continues into the Bronx, but Brooklyn Queens and Staten Island each have a distinct street with that name. The postal town is named after the area where it's main post office is. In my case, that would be Flushing, which is several miles north east from me.So as far as the United States Postal service cares, I can be said to live in Ridgewood, NY, or Flushing NY, but not Queens NY or NY, NY.
+metropod thanks for sharing Metrpod, this is strangely fascinating to know!
+Londonist Ltd want something really strange? I went to high school in a neighborhood the post office made up!"Yea, you folks over near LaGuardia Airport? You now live in East Elmhurst" "But we're nowhere near Elmhurst!""too bad, that's what we're calling you now""Why can't we be North Jackson Heights, or East Corona or West Astoria? Oh, Got it, they used to call this area 'Trains Meadow', how about that?""Our mind is made up, East Elmhurst it is"And I left one thing out from my first post. My issues with my neighborhood are relatively recent. Before I was born, it was even worse. My family has lived in this area for a long time and even up the time my parents were dating, Ridgewood and Glendale had Brooklyn zip codes, even though they weren't in Brooklyn. Imagine the some random person from the Royal Mail knocking on your office door and saying "hi Londonist, love your work, By the way, all you mail has to say you're in Hackney, even though we know you're in Islington." If I got that backwards, I'm sorry, can't find a detailed enough map, but you get the idea.
Ahh good old NYC trivia, enjoyed this a lot, as i hail originally from Flushing NY (proper flushing, e.g, northern & parsons).. Then i moved to Brooklyn (heights to be exact), and was always confused why my mailing address that went from the town-name, now referred to an entire boro.. thanks for clarifying the reasoning behind that..
i think a large amount of that discombobulation comes from the fact that you may have unintentionally glossed over that, i believe each of the boroughs used to be their own "cities", with Manhattan (what people think of when they think, new york, proper) and Brooklyn, having been the first and third largest cities in the country at the time. It was with the building of the brooklyn bridge that marked the unification of the boroughs in 1883 and from then on it was called one 'New York City'. If you'd like to learn more about NYC history, there's a great PBS documentary film directed by Ric Burns, you can find it also on youtube for the curious.
Funny how a lot of people don't realize NYC is more than just Manhattan, it's actually made of the 5 boroughs: Manhattan and Staten island (worlds apart lifestyle wise) being the only actual islands, with Brooklyn and Queens on the larger Long Island (made up of also non-NYC Nassau and Suffolk counties), and finally the boogie down Bronx, which actually is the only part of NYC to be on the mainland of the USA (and it was named after an old large land owned by John Bronck, bordered by a river, dubbed Bronck's River, and just shorted to Bronx some time later).
p.s.. i now live in London actually, so i am thankful to be able to learn about the history here now as well! :-D
Should't it be West Corona, or East Astoria. Anyway naming that area East Elmhurst is dumb and stupid.
According to 4/5 of those criteria I live in London, so I'm gonna go with yes (despite what some of my pedantic friends might say - damn not having a London postcode!)
I am from Enfield North London
The other boundary would be the North and South Circular, although a friend of mine years ago insisted the boundary was the circle line.
@Deesar Thafaks Well, who could possibly argue with such a cogent, lucid, tightly argued and comprehensive response? I bow in awe to whatever point you think that you are making.
EnGlANd iS mY CiTY
Do I live in London? the answer is yes, I do. I live in John O'Groats up in Scotland.....
I don't live in London. I've always wanted to go there, though. I live in Texas. (Yeah, in the USA.)
Some would also consider themselves living in London if they live in a town that isn't in Greater London but is attached to the conurbation area, for example Loughton
In my opinion if you are in the M25 you are in London and if you are outside the M25 you are outside of LondonThe M25 is the border
Would you class Slough as London? Although they do have one red bus service to Hounslow!
I live up in Norway, so whether or not I live in London is only a question about tectonic plate movements and London's future boundaries.
I live in Canada so I don't think I live in London.
Or London, Ontario
That's it. I live in a London borough so if I am told I live in Surrey one more time I'm going to do something drastic.
I live in switzerland :3
Yes I live in London because Turkey Street overground station is in Zone 6 and I live there!
Well I live in Athens...
London borough, well within M25, Zone 5, 0208, but EN postcode. So 4/5, I'm going with yes!
Wembley has an HA (Harrow) postcode and not an NW one as you may expect..?