Once the Olympics finished arrives some sort of calm, combined with a persistent economic crisis, with a looming larger crisis on the Euro zone. The images of the 2011 urban riots are still present in the minds.

What is still left of the London that ruled the world at the turn of the XXth century? A lot and just a few things.

The city is still marked by many of the same structural elements, in a larger measure than other European capitals, in part due to the strong associations that opposed the urban motorways during the last quarter of the XXth century. High tech architecture maintains an image close somehow to that of the big steel structures of the XIXth century.

But the city has grown, the personality of its zones has evolved, and despite the substantial expansion of the financial economy up to the present crisis, Great Britain has become a mid-sized power with a role in the world still to be defined.