In a study of credit card data London England’s outer ring of suburbs appear to be the big winners in that city’s economic recovery. As more office workers work from home and tourists stay away, consumer spending and monies for food and drink were the same or more than that of preCovid spending levels in those smaller communities.
Joanna Partridge a business writer for The Guardian reports that by tracking credit card data a trend to keep spending close to home was prevalent, with only 25 percent of downtown workers returning to the central core. There was a low amount of steady expenditure which is attributed to London centre’s downtown citizen population estimated to be 330,000 people.
Transit trips to the downtown core were down 50 percent although driving and biking rates have returned to pre pandemic levels.
Professor of public policy at King’s College London Mark Kleinman perceives this changing economic trend was coming but has been rapidly deployed due to the increase of online shopping and the reinforcing of long term working from home during Covid times.
“We are now seeing some evidence of additional impacts, particularly on the balance of economic activity between the centre and other parts of the city, that are in part a consequence of these accelerated changes.”
Images: OxfordStreet,BBCAmerica
