London is bigger than Hong Kong, but how big is it really? London Lad gives his take and explains the very old postcode system.

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London can be as big as you want it to be! There are several ways to define what is London and what is not.

City of London

The most officially ‘London’ part of London is the financial district is officially known as the City of London, or the Square Mile, which refers to how small it is.

Greater London

There are 32 local government districts that make up Greater London. People living in these areas pay taxes to the Greater London Authority and get to vote on the mayor. So, definitely part of London.

London post codes

Some places have ‘London’ in their postal address while others do not. This is because the post code system for London was set up in 1856 whereas the rest of the country got a more general postcode system only 100 years later. So a lot of places we think of as being in London do not have the London postal address, and will be counted as part of the surrounding counties, Surrey, Kent, Essex, Hertfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire. To be honest, it is cooler to have a ‘London’ postal address, but it doesn’t really mean anything.

Transport for London Zones 1-9

Some people measure London by the transport zones, which begin with Zone 1 in the centre and radiate to Zone 6 around the edge of Greater London and even up to Zone 9 for some routes. It’s important to know that the zones are a system for calculating train fares, not for measuring actual geography. For example, some places that are Zone 3 are further out than ones that are Zone 5, so it’s not a reliable guide at all.

The M25

The M25 is the motorway that runs all the way around London. A bit like the travel zones, it’s exact route doesn’t mean anything, but it does makes a handy reference point for people. They do think of places as being ‘within the M25’, or ‘outside the M25’. In that way it makes an informal border. Probably the maximum you can say you are ‘in London’ is if you are within the M25.

_{Image: Benjamin Davies on Unsplash}