London Is(n't) a Place for the Young

Every Thursday, I embark on a cross-London journey from South West to North West London, for a jazz choir that I love being a part of. All members are older than me, with the second youngest member of the group being our thirty-something Musical Director, a music teacher at a special needs primary school. 

Being the choir baby has its perks, but London’s youth at large are restless. We make up 53% of London, but London doesn’t work for us. Radical political change is unavoidable if London’s underbelly is to be saved. London’s eschewal to embrace its full potential, hinges on economic and environmental issues. Let’s start with economics. 

Young people want value items, but are likely to be more ‘woke’ and progressively liberal. This often bars the once young person hotspot Wetherspoons from catering to their needs; its clientele now resembles the full spectrum of depressed middle age. Alternatives to such chains are, however, also ceasing to exist with the rise in billionaire landlords such as Asif Aziz closing dozens of pubs and decimating London’s night life tout court. Into the void have flooded house parties – not contributing to the wider economy or life of the city in the same way, and deleterious to an accessible urban public life. 

On the train on a Thursday evening two girls sharing my late 20s age sat opposite me, and started chatting to me – refreshing in and of itself in London. They were embracing our city’s nightlife, but again doing it in a way that was affordable to them, and they did not, crucially, see themselves as Londoners. 

One of them turned out to have Iranian heritage, having presumably moved to London for university. I’ve lived in London all my life, a native so to speak, and feel we should be encouraging young people into the city, but how do we do this as we hear of night venue after venue closing? 

Cheaper housing is one method, with genuinely affordable options – not a piecemeal help to buy plan. This requires radical thinking, on modular housing, rent caps, and more schemes enabling co-living communities. 

Another, less obvious, issue oh so pertinent to the modern London is Artificial Intelligence (a merging of the environmental and economic) – stay with me at the back. With the rise in Artificial Intelligence, we are seeing the elimination of junior roles – junior roles that young people usually flocked to London for. AI screening AI optimised CVs leading to a rejection from AI is how recruiting presently operates, warping London from an aspirational city to a transitory and nigh-on inaccessible one, with even those who make it treated as comparatively devalued, qua soon to be redundant. 

Whilst corporate and political leaders salivate at the ambition and innovation proffered by the AI boom, its proliferation is leading to a lack of economic opportunities for the young. This spells disaster in the future, as once junior roles are eliminated, what fount do the future middleweights and seniors flow from? Answer: that fount does not exist, so the creative industries in particular will wither. Moreover, whilst senior roles are safe for now, this will not last. 

A vast rethink of London and formative national priorities is required – rehumanise recruiting to a non-’Computer says no’ industry, making it human again. The suppression of AI is a part of this. In the past 10 months, I have been unemployed and applied to 1193 jobs on LinkedIn alone, usually answered with an automated response, meaning a human has likely not even seen it. I’ve seen a change in jobs even in this time. Gone are junior roles, with apprenticeships, graduate schemes and internships practically unattainable due to eye-watering levels of competition seeing 1000 applicants for a single role in some cases.  In one way this makes me feel encouraged, because as a fellow creative, I am in the same boat as all of these other people struggling, however, there is no answer from our end about what more we could be doing. Recruiting managers are getting lazy with their job opportunities – asking for a one size fits all creative visionary who can use AI to generate ideas with the correct prompts, the same AI which in the long run will eliminate their jobs. 

Human careers, we must remember, can make a comeback. Other areas of the utile creative economy desperately need these. I have long, for example, been a proponent of modular housing – houses that can be built in sections in a faster and more cost efficient way. I came across one example of this years ago in the QB2 designed by Dr Mike Page, and was convinced it would become a staple of the affordable housing market options, and yet, here we still are, with house prices rising and not just in London. 

Aforementioned environmental concerns are also a disincentive. London is not easy to live in. The ear-splitting and toxic environment in the centre leaves you exhausted, with even travelling to get job assistance being an effort. As discussed in previous articles, I’m autistic, and I have sought specific help from disability charities on joblessness because of this. Every week I voyage across London, from south-west to north-east, to receive employment insight from Scope. This is in addition to other appointments at the ineffectual Ingeus Restart programme and the much maligned Job Centre, happening fortnightly and monthly respectively. All of these outings provide a journey and a period to reflect, but also leave me anxious as I struggle to understand what I’m doing the work for, for jobs that don’t exist in the first place in a city that should be heaving with opportunity. I love London, because of its culture, and after scratching below the surface of its franticness, the people in it too. But without work opportunities a city like London becomes unavoidably bleak, because its joys are unattainable.

“Why should I even bother?”, I often ask myself – the work will come, I am sure, but when?

Image: Eliot Lord Original.

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