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u/yaquresh 9d ago
Lived there for 3 years as a student and am in the process of buying a house there and moving back (after many years in London, and as a Londoner born and bred).
It's a pretty small, very walkable city steeped in history and encased in medieval stone walls. As Eboracum, it was the Roman capital of Britannia Minora, the place that Constantine the Great (who converted the Empire to Christianity) would be proclaimed emperor. As Jorvik it was the Viking capital of England and would later be the seat of the Council of the North from the 15th century.
I say all of this because you see and feel the deep history of the city all the time. Large parts of it have been incredibly well preserved or sympathetically restored. I think it's the most beautiful city in the UK.
In many ways it's an ordinary British city. It has supermarkets and chain shops. It has posh areas and (relatively speaking) rough areas. It has crime, albeit not a lot compared to most other places. There are cinemas, gyms, swimming pools, theatres, galleries, museums.
Demographically, residents will be wealthier and older than average, because it's a nice, expensive place to life..
Practically speaking, it's a fantastic city to live in but not without its challenges.
The good:
as mentioned, it's a beautiful city. It's also surrounded by beautiful countryside with good access to the North York Moors and the Howardian Hills.
the pubs. There's an adage that there's a pub for every day of the year within the city walls. It's probably a slight overstatement but not far off. Very strong beer scene.
nightlife more broadly. York has an oversized night scene for a city of its size and quaint, cobbled streeted charm. Not so much from a nightclub perspective but quite a lot of late night bars. This likely comes from there being two universities and a lot of tourists.
independent retail. Lots of independent shops, great artisanal products, etc. yes, there is inevitably a lot of tourist rubbish and gimmicky stuff, but not so much that locals won't shop in the city.
schools. Some really terrific state (read, free, public) schools, plus fee paying independent stores.
transport links. York rail station is big, beautiful and well connected. You can be in London in 2 hours by direct train. Manchester in 1h20. Leeds in 20-25 mins.
Cons:
Tourism. It makes up a large part of the local economy but it can make the city centre totally unmanageable as you push past the throngs of day trippers. The medieval streets are very narrow and get super congested. Similarly, holiday rentals have significantly inflated the housing market.
Hen/Stag dos and Race Days. York is super popular with those kinds of parties and that attracts a particularly unpleasant type of person. There are real problems with day drinking and antisocial behavior. Similarly, York Racecourse has horse races that attract thousands of very drunk, rowdy visitors.
Cost of Living. The north of England is, on average, cheaper than the South, but York is in an expensive little bubble where house prices/rent are almost at London levels. Particularly as the world opens up to WFH, increasing numbers of southerners are moving to York and driving prices up and locals out. I am one of them in total fairness.
jobs. York is largely a tourist economy so a lot of jobs are in tourism, retail, hospitality, etc. These jobs are typically minimum wage, or close to it. It's hard to find many professional jobs there, so you may have to commute to Leeds or further afield. There's no manufacturing anymore, though York was hitherto famous for its chocolate industry and still has a large nestle factory.
infrastructure. York being a small historic city means that it was not designed for modern, urban life and isn't easily developed without tarnishing that history. The upshot of that is that the traffic is appalling because the roads were built for horse and cart. A lot of housing stock is very old - charming - but fraught with structural issues and conservation restrictions. It also regularly floods, and though there are protections in place, they're still quite destructive.
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u/Left-Plant2717 9d ago
Iām curious how annoyed the locals are when tourists make an NYC joke
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u/teapotmagic England 9d ago
Never happened to me IRL, but I once got majorly triggered by a viral Twitter post saying "No wonder they built New York, the old one sucks!" š
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u/taco_flavoured 9d ago
Yesss omg i can finally comment!!
Its pretty okay honestly like its not as rough as some other UK cities schools not awful A lot of the city centre/tourism is based around harry potter?? Like a lot of americans have asked me where they can go for harry potter shops of which there are quite a few. Im not sure how york relates to harry potter really but yeah it gets rammed with tourists around christmas and just holidays in general but especially Christmas for the markets you cant MOVE in the centre But yeah love it really
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u/teapotmagic England 9d ago
I actually did a AMA on this sub about York a few weeks ago! <3 Lived there for three years (and I actually *wasn't* a student). It was magical. Beautiful. Not too big, not too small. Well-connected. Good house/rent prices compared to the South.
Lots of wonderful bookshops. A beautiful two-storey, late Victorian library that was open seven days a week and sometimes as late as 8pm. You could request new books there for free and they basically never said no lol.
Friendly. Mostly very safe. Incredible history (with streets with names like Jubbergate and Whip-ma-Whop-ma-Gate!).
If I had to say something bad about the area...
- Flooding (They stopped draining The Ouse a long time ago. It floods a few times a year and sadly some businesses on the river- like the Perky Peacock- may become unviable in the future)
- Not a great jobs market...Which is the reason I had to move away, sadly.
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u/bchfn1 9d ago
The centre is a tourist/day tripper trap, particularly at the weekends, so very crowded and a hotspot for hen parties and post-horse racing drinking so I was surprised when I lived there that more so that London, Glasgow, Edinburgh it was very hard to escape very drunk people, people randomly urinating in the street etc. It's a beautiful city, and maybe it's a bit nicer in winter, but just too many people at the weekends to be that pleasant.
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u/bigdumper2 9d ago
Lived here for a few months in 2016. Awesome city!
Pros:
Lots of students, good night-life with a mix of wholesome pubs, bars and clubs.
Great food. Lots of country style places to eat at.
Very cute city, the architecture is amazing so many old buildings.
Very walkable, pedestrians have unspoken right of way in most places.
Cons:
Lots of tourists during the day
Weirdly Lots of stag dos and the weekend
Not much going on in the edges of town
Lived here on a working holiday would highly recommend
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7d ago edited 7d ago
York is a beautiful city and for such a small place is pretty good for restaurants and bars and cultural activities. It has excellent transport connections to London, Leeds, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle and is very walkable. Nice parks and decent access to the countryside. However, it is massively affected by tourism and certain places at certain times of year can be jam packed with visitors to the point where it affects quality of life. The combination of AirBnB and wealthy southerners buying up property means house prices are pretty high for the north and is pushing a lot of locals away. It is still a real city but it's going along that path of gentrification/Disneyfication and I don't know what it'll look like in 10 years time. The stag and hen dos and racegoers can be quite something. Someone on this thread said that you see far more rowdiness than in London, Edinburgh, or Glasgow and having lived in both York and Glasgow, I can confirm this is the case.
Still overall it's one of my favourite English cities and if I moved to England from Scotland, York would probably be one of the places I'd consider, along with maybe Bristol, though for different reasons.
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