A recent article in the Economist about the Rosetta space probe reminded me again of the uniqueness of London on the global stage. The piece notes:
In a clean room at the Airbus Defence & Space (ADS) factory north of London, scientists are working on LISA Pathfinder (pictured), a hexagon-shaped satellite due to be launched next year. The aim of the ambitious space mission is to try, for the first time, to find and measure gravitational waves–ripples in space-time predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
…
About one-quarter of the world’s commercial communication satellites are built in Britain and 40% of the world’s small satellites…The whole space sector directly employs 35,000 people, and the supply-chain accounts for thousands more jobs. London-based Inmarsat is one of the world’s largest satellite operators, specialising in mobile telephony.
When you think of London, finance, media and creative industries tend to be top of mind. Aerospace and defense may not immediately register, but greater London is a key node in that global industry. Beyond the space related industries noted above, there’s also companies like defense contractor BAE Systems, and events such as the globally significant Farnborough Airshow.
In fact, in some of the research I contributed to a recent global cities survey found that London uniquely has some strength is every single globally important macroindustry I looked at. No other city – not even New York – was as simultaneously broad and deep.
London’s status as a global financial center is of course well known. It’s also hugely influential in global culture and entertainment. It is a global center of the music industry, with British acts predominantly from or drawn to London routinely becoming best sellers around the world. Warner Brothers has a major production studio there, creating such films as Harry Potter. The BBC, Economist, and Financial Times are news outlets of global reach and influence, even outside the English speaking world. The Daily Mail and the Guardian are the two largest newspaper web sites in the world. London is a major advertising and marketing hub, a major fashion hub, a major tourist destination, and is home to world-renowned cultural institutions.
London has also emerged as Europe’s stop tech hub. Not only are there tons of startups – it has the top ranked startup ecosystem that outranked any European city according to analysis of Startup Genome project data – companies like Google have opened huge offices there.
But there’s more to it than that. London is a center of the global pharmaceutical industry and is headquarters to GlaxoSmithKline and Astra Zeneca, plus is home to foreign HQ’d operations as well. BP is an energy major there and other big firms like Chevron maintain operations and regional HQs in the area. Oil services firm Petrofac is based there and its home to the European HQ Baker Hughes. Its weakest industry I found was automotive, but even here it’s home to Honda’s European HQ.
Not all of these companies are located in central London. But the Greater London area is home to a simply huge number of firms in all sorts of industries, making it a top to bottom global powerhouse. This isn’t just a global city built on finance and other services. It’s a global city built on everything.