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London itself, as in the City of London, is still only a square mile, it's even called 'The Square Mile'. And the City of London is more-or-less based on the borders of the old Roman city of Londinium. Parts of the Roman city walls are still around today.

Greater London is an amalgamation of the neighbouring boroughs that grew and merged into the London metropolis today. Eg, Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, Hammersmith and Fulham, Camden, etc.

You can see which borough you're in by looking at the street signs.



There are historical maps at the aptly named:

https://www.old-maps.co.uk

A lot of the growth happened from 1900 onwards, when Camden was a few streets away from the rural outskirts, and Hammersmith was on the outskirts.

After that the suburbs exploded. In some areas they stretch all the way out to the M25.


CGP Grey has a good explanation of London vs The City of London:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc


Funnily enough Westminster is it's own city as well, so London consists of 3 cities really.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Westminster


Greater London consists of many boroughs or 'cities', way more than three. Each is its own municipality, just like Westminster.

The City of London happens to be one of the smallest, and least populous.

Edit - on rereading this, I realise you may have been referring to the fact that Westminister has 'City' in its name, whereas most others boroughs use the word 'Borough'. I'm not aware of other boroughs in Greater London that are also 'Cities' in that respect.


I'm not aware of any other London boroughs other than Westminster that actually hold the City status though. Being both a borough and a city is pretty unique I think.


By far the least populous. In the 2011 census it had a population of 7375.


Also interesting, those people live only within 4 electoral wards, whereas there are 25 total electoral wards within the City.

Within the remaining 21 electoral wards, votes are controlled by businesses (mostly banks and the like), and the amount of votes that each business receives depends on it's size.


In any country that didn't have arcane rules about what constitutes a city, each borough would probably be a city


Even amongst boroughs, all are not equal. Eg, it's the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_place_names_with_roy...




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