How Trading Floor Availability Creates Financial Districts
John Gapper says that "something about financial centres seems to make them split into different districts" – citing West Kowloon in Hong Kong and Canary Wharf in London as financial districts which have sprung up as alternatives to the historic financial districts. In New York, he adds, the pendulum has started swinging back: while banks seemed to be increasingly moving to midtown in the 1990s, they now seem more attracted by lower Manhattan than they have in a long time.
Gapper thinks this all has something to do with cheap rents. I think that there's a much more important factor: trading floors.
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