A friend of mine purchased a cottage from the crown estate and it was not maintained competently, nor in a manner compliant with building regulations. The entire way they went about splitting up the land before sale was complete nonsense... the first draft of the deeds drawn up by the crown would have granted my friend the land he wanted plus half of his neighbour's cottage (as in, a line was drawn right through their living room!)
I think on balance, it seems fairer to say that the Crown owns a lot of land, and doesn't have the resources to manage it all competently. Their view is from 10,000 feet and us normal people are like ants...
(Interestingly, the only part of the law that the Crown does seem to have to obey is that regarding the listing of buildings. They performed some non compliant modifications on the cottage and were forced to change them back! Then again, perhaps the Crown merely chooses to go along with listings...)
I lived in a flat managed by the Crown Estate and it was excellently managed, and then the whole thing was sold to Peabody and things were generally less good.
If 75% of the profits go to the government (and arguably, as long as the monarchy continues to exist, the other 25% covers expenses that the government would end up funding anyway), then doesn't that make the Crown Estate actually a small Sovereign Wealth Fund more than anything else?
Lots of the media coverage around the Crown Estate seems to focus on the wealth of the Royal Family - if I were their PR team I'd be trying to push the (quasi-)SWF angle pretty hard.
It is literally a Sovereign Wealth Fund, in that it's the wealth of the sovereign. It's just (like a lot of things in the UK) not very democratically accountable.
What does it mean for a SWF to be "democratically accountable"?
Given SWFs generally act like other large scale institutional investors - I suppose democratic accountability has put political pressure on some SWFs to act on ESG concerns (changing investment strategies away from fossil fuels towards renewables, voting in favour of climate activist resolutions, etc) but apart from that, is there any reason to think that the Crown Estate is doing a bad job at maximising returns to the government?
(And to be clear, though I suspect you know this - I'm not using the S in SWF to refer to the head of state specifically, but to the government, as is the traditional meaning)
They’re going to really get excited when they realise the crown estate is actually the whole of England and Wales (less the duchy of Cornwall iirc).
The bit they are talking about is the residual that hasn’t had a “freehold” tenancy granted to some other person.
You can’t hold land in England and Wales. The Crown owns it all. All you can hold is a heritable interest in land - an interest that returns to the Crown if you die Bono Vacantia.
I believe you're describing the sovereign holding "allodial title", which is (mostly) true in all jurisdictions deriving from English common law, including, for example, the US States (well, 49 of them), so it's not a practice constrained to England and Wales, or to monarchy. (But IANAL.)
I think some US States had a feature where you could pay a fixed amount to satisfy all future property taxes, but I don't believe it relieved the possibility of eminent domain, escheat, or police power.
It's very simple really - it's a government-owned sovereign wealth fund, with an unusual clause that 25% of the revenue goes to the Queen. In this context, "crown" means "government" more than "queen", eg "crown land" means "government land".
If the UK ditched the monarchy, the government would continue to own this property, but keep the 25%.
Any private foundation or trust can function this way. These kinds of organizations have no owners only contracts that specify conditional outcomes.
Anybody can make these. Anybody can capitalize them. They can own the titles to anything. The trustees can be natural persons and other entities and other trusts, and governments. The trustees can be swapped out with no public record of it ever changing. The directors and administrators can change as well.
There is an infinite number of them in existence.
It isn't more or less complicated that the Queen of England is intrinsically tied to one. The article does a disservice by leading with that.
The primary confusion is just in the name of the entity "The Crown Estate" as both a concept and a registered entity, the concept of the Crown/Monarchy, and the personal private holdings of the Queen. But these can easily be abstracted away by simply re-labeling them in a chart and not acting like its that confusing.
Why does a trust like this not run afoul of the rule against perpetuities? [1]
Is it because as long as there are living directors, they can technically vote to change the rules? Who would these directors for the Crown Estate be? The Queen? Parliament? A person at the top of the management chain?
Is there an actual mechanism (other than tradition, good will, etc.) that prevents the entity managing/controlling the Crown Estate from voting to change the rules about how it's governed and who gets what proceeds?
It seems that the answer to this question is that an act of Parliament could (probably?) change the rules, therefore it's not a perpetuity, and the share to the monarch is a tradition that they just aren't inclined to change right now.
Why? Because that’s not a real law, its a creature of the courts and every time the legislature got involved it was to make a real law that abolishes any notion of the concept of limitations
from your own article
“Many jurisdictions have statutes that either cancel out the rule entirely or clarify it”
The places that only clarified it have created lengths of time exceeding anyone. In the US some states made a length of time longer than the age of the nation itself
UK areas having similarly long results or abolishing the notion
>Why? Because that’s not a real law, its a creature of the courts and every time the legislature got involved it was to make a real law
Sorry, but that's just plain wrong.
Common law is law, and Parliament, the courts and the government all recognise it as being "real law".
There's nothing special about statute law that makes it any more "real" than common law.
The only difference is that statute law can do anything, including modifying or abolishing provisions of common law, whereas common law can't expressly contradict statute because of parliamentary sovereignty.
(And even parliamentary sovereignty has its theoretical limits - in R (Jackson) v Attorney General the law lords opined in obiter dicta that PS wasn't necessarily absolute)[0]
> According to the May 2021 edition of The Sunday Times Rich List, Queen Elizabeth II has a personal net worth of £365m. A whopping £100 million of that alone accounts for the queen's family's personal stamp collection, known as the Royal Philatelic Collection.
In the very first Times Rich List (1989), the Queen was at the top on £5.2bn.
Where has all the wealth gone? It hasn't. The Times changed the rules for the Queen (and only the Queen) after a nice note from the palace. Now, things she has full use of but can't sell aren't included (eg the Royal Collection).
Why are we talking about the 'Queen' like she's a private citizen who could cash out, and take all that money to a privately owned island in the Bahamas?
Being 'Queen' is a job. She's effectively the CEO of a company (which is why it's informally called 'the firm'). She also works hard and has worked hard as a key member of the firm all her life.
Being upset at the Queen for being rich, is like being upset at the board members of an international bank. It's not her personal money, that she can take with her if she stopped being the Monarch, in fact she has less of an option to do that.
The Monarchy does so much for this country via tourism and and international relations, that we'd be worse off without them. Calculations have proven that they MAKE money for the country despite the huge cost in keeping the institution running.
Versailles is the most successful tourist attraction in Europe, with 10 million visitors per year. I'm confident that if we had the ability to fully open the Royal Palaces and make the whole of the Royal Collection available for public view, tourism would go up, not down. Viewed this way, they're a hindrance to the country making money not a help.
> The Monarchy does so much for this country via tourism and and international relations, that we'd be worse off without them.
This is the crap the royal family's press department churns out, to be repeated by fawning journalists trailing their every move.
More tourists visit Paris than London. Unlike in London, they can go inside those palaces and see the art collections.
The presidential guards in Athens or Moscow still do a ridiculous dance when they change shift, and Britain could keep their equivalent in a republic if it's what tourists want to see.
Republics choose who represents them. If they want a conman with no respect for women, they can vote for Trump. They can change their minds and vote for someone else a few years later.
There is a valid place for a figure who's a "spokesperson" for the country though.
When there's a national disaster and we need someone to put on TV to provide calming words, when we want to organize charitable efforts, or send someone on tours to represent our interests, it's great to have a figure who can be brought out as a single trusted, respectable voice for the nation.
This person, almost by nature, cannot be an elected official. The moment you drag a PM or President-- ANY PM or President-- into the role, you're going to have 40% of the population ignoring the message because of toxic political divisiveness. You've also got the factor that many of them are short-term players-- if you were a real-estate developer until 5 years ago, you don't necessarily develop the same people skills and self-presentation.
In a way, having it be some sort of hereditary position works, because it's such a delicate job that you want a clear pipeline of people who can be developed for the job, trained for life, and kept "on call" for their turn.
Now, you could argue there's a way to get this sort of service with better value for money, perhaps bringing in a similar role with some more republican-friendly title instead of an allusion to an old absolute monarchy, but I can see the value a figurehead monarch can provide.
Elizabeth II has done, by any possible measure, a spectacular job in the spokesperson role for the country. Even the most ardent republicans generally don't dislike her on a personal level, and you can send her anywhere and be sure she won't cause an international incident.
You seem to assume a hereditary monarch will be universally respected and trusted, but a president won't be. That's not even the case for Elizabeth, and will be more difficult for Charles.
I would accept Charles Windsor as president in a Republic of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. But he should compete against everyone else for the position — and if there's racism or interference in the legal process, we can kick him out.
I wouldn’t accept any political figure. Farage, Blair, Corbyn, Thatcher, Jeremy Clarkson, Ian McKellen, whoever. If you have to run a campaign then forget it
Anyone who wants to be that figurehead should be disqualified.
I could perhaps accept a completly random figurehead, but then I think of the majority of Brits and realise what an awful idea that would be.
Ha! They are there because the British people like them and would never vote for a hard left party that was proposing to abolish them. There's your democracy for you though you may not like it.
Aslo traditions liberals: "Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support free markets, free trade, limited government, individual rights.."
are fine with it. Modern woke lefties and old school socialists maybe not.
She is completely unaccountable. The British press is unwilling to criticize, and people who've discussed anything with her rarely discuss it with others.
Princes Philip, Charles, Andrew and Harry have all been embarrassing, and they also represent Britain.
It's pure ideology to not consider the enormous capital income rich people receive as a cost. If the monarchy ended, the 25% of the Crown Estate the Queen currently receives could be kept by the government and used for schools, hospitals etc instead.
And tourism would be unaffected, because all the old buildings etc would still be there just the same. Paris does fine for tourism in spite of a lack of royal family.
No, if monarchy ended, the Crown Estate would just become ex-royal family's private property. That was a condition of its formation in the XVIII century. Make no mistake - originally it WAS King's private property. It was only half-reverted to the State when the King (George III in particular) ran into serious financial difficulties.
No it wouldn't - it is literally government property already, and would remain so. Why would the government transfer it to a private citizen that does not own it?
It does get bit more interesting when the wealth has yearly net-cost... And really can not be liquidated. And some wealth brings more yearly than some other. With royalty and old upper-class this likely doesn't compare to more modern wealth.
I think the fact that one inherited dozens of castles and mansions that one can make exclusive use of, including lending them to people as political favors, including that one one's net worth is instructive.
What good are nuclear weapons? I'd rather have Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Holyrood Palace, Balmoral Castle, and a bunch of other properties, a giant vault full of treasure stolen from all over the world, plus titles I can dole out as political favors. $90b can't buy that.
"However, 25% of the profits are given back to the queen and the royal family as part of the Sovereign Grant, which is used to fund the royal family itself on an annual basis. For example, this year's figure of £85.9 million is 25% of The Crown Estate's profits in 2018/19. So that means the queen's own personal fortunes are directly connected to the performance of The Crown Estate."
Yeah, but the Sovereign Grant is used to fund the sovereign (and related family members) in her working role as head of state. This is for things like people employed in the Royal Household, people who maintain Buckingham Palace, etc.
Note this is separate from the income of the Duchy of Lancaster (for the monarch) and the Duchy of Cornwall (for the Prince of Wales), which is more like personal income.
Oh, come on, it's like being president, only moreso. Being president means you have to travel all the time, of course! And how are you going to fly, in business? Of course not!
You think the people employed in the Royal Household wouldn't hustle to get the Prince of Wales a sandwich if he asked for it right away?
At a certain point income and status are the commingled. I remember the quote from I think Tony Blair, that he never handles money, when a fee comes up for cash he would ask one of his bodyguards for bills.
There are lots of orphaned entities on this planet which collect capital and grow capital and pay out to different parties who are not shareholders, who are not directors, or to no one. This is not a complicated concept.
Well, it is to certain people, the ones who will squabble over a debate about it for 100 years while nothing meaningful changes.
In the sake of this article, just make a flow chart instead of dancing around the concept of ownership like its a mysterious controversy for 10 paragraphs.
The English monarchy is very different from its European counterparts. They sadly never experienced the reformation of the French Revolution the ensuing Napoleonic wars and 1848.
The fact that over 60% of people like to live in a country where birth defines a family's worth as higher than everyone else is mind boggling. I understand at a fundamental level the worship of rich people, since it gives everyone something to work towards, "billionaires aren't so bad because I may be one some day". I cannot understand supporting the monarchy. Are any of the 60% around that could explain their thoughts? I come from a country with over 100 years of republic so maybe I lack perspective.
How would you say democracy has been performing lately in the English speaking world? Yes, the royal family is wealthy by birth but it's a tiny fraction of national wealth and the country gets something in return e.g. stability, some shared identity, soft power, tourism. I think British people mainly want to avoid another grubby scramble for political power by the unfit who then proceed to try and push ideology and fill their own pockets.
I'll take the royals, who have been raised to have sense of duty and know they need to project the impression of service, over president Blair/Boris any day.
But as a fellow Brit I there's parts of this I really can't understand. How could anyone not see the royals as filling their own pockets, given their ludicrous wealth?
As for the sense of duty and noblesse oblige, well, I think Prince Andrew explodes a lot of those refined notions. As far as I know, the royal family hasn't sanctioned him in any serious way.
By "fill their pockets" I mean actively engage in political corruption. The royal families relatively static wealth makes little difference in the grand scheme. The £85m figure from the crown estate mentioned in this article is 0.1% of government spending.
I didn't mean to suggest the royal family are unimpeachable beacons of virtue but that their primary motivations are different to politicians in a way that benefits the country.
By political corruption I mean activities that are obviously detrimental at societal level. That sucks if you are Charles's Tennant and you want to by the freehold but I'm think more of funnelling contracts to your unqualified friends like the PPE scandals. Again I'm not suggesting the royals are perfect just that the alternative is worse.
One story I remember is some corruption is okay when there is enough to go around.
If I told you that the janitors responsible for changing the light bulbs didn’t wait for the lights to burn out and replaced light bulbs with a few weeks worth of life left (when replacing other light bulbs) and took them home to use them you probably wouldn’t bat an eye. It isn’t even worth spending time thinking about it in developed countries.
However, imagine you are in a developing country and corruption is rampant. I think you would justifiably be less charitable toward the janitor even though you know it is the same act but the pie is smaller so every bit counts.
The royals being corrupt in the UK (I hope it becomes just England and Wales within my lifetime, preferably with NI and Scotland withdrawing) is ok but the royals being corrupt in Swaziland is a big problem.
The monarchy is an old institution, a bit like an old historic city, cathedral or museum. The British are very distrustful of knocking down old things to replace them with new because once they're gone they cannot be brought back instead we just generally tweak/evolve them to suit the modern age without completely replacing them.
Would getting rid of the monarchy actually really change anything other than being change for the sake of change? Not really, so what would be the point?
As a German, it's cringe-worthy to me that a German state-run media outlet runs such a piece. The Crown Enstate Entity isn't "mysterious" at all if you engage with a country's history. But I think this is the spirit of our relations going forward since the Brits decided to not go with the program.
Also: The gap in housing affordability isn't driven by a palace outside of London, or some sea-floor property. It is driven by city governments and their "Highwaymaning" via zoning and more.
I sincerley beleive that the monarchy are one of the best defenders against the rise of nationalism in Britain, not just in recent times but going back to the start of Elizabeth's reign.
There are plenty of examples throughout history of movements coming to power by adopting marches, uniforms, ralies, ceremonies, symbols etc and co-opting them to their cause and calling themselves 'true patriots'. But in Britain, that's almost exclusively the relm of the Royal Family, so it's effectively impossible for any political movement to offer any of that in any meaningful way, because it's not really possible to be 'more patriotic' than the actual royal family. So yeah, if you want to feel patriotic you wave a flag an watch the queen do something quite harmless, as opposed to march with a, potentially quite nasty, group of politicians.
Nothing in history is absolute - and the fact that the UK went to war against fascists shortly after that time probably also contributed to their demise, but actually yes I would consider their failure to gain a major foothold an example of this.
I’m not saying their are no marches and uniforms at all, even nowadays - but that they’re just going to have a bloody great struggle to try and upstage the ceremony and popularity of a Royal event - particularly if one of their claims is patriotism.
As one of the 60%, its not about deity worship, but more about a sense of stability. Especially where the monarchy has effectively zero involvement in daily life. When looked at from a P&L basis the crown is pretty good value. Certainly compared to all the alternatives that have been tried.
Replace the commons with PR (STV on constituencies c. 6 times the size), replace the lords with people who have been in the commons for 20 years. Ensures fresh blood in the commons and removes the need to pander to the short term elections in the lords.
I think there's value in having an unelected second chamber, because the lords are freer to broach unpopular but important subjects. Nevertheless imo it would be much better to have them randomly chosen from society.
Under the monarchy the UK has had peaceful transitions of power for 360 years. The system we have works and so most people here are happy with it.
Alternatives like the US presidential republic system (currently at 0 years of peaceful transitions of power) don't seem more attractive to most people here.
This is a myth we like to tell ourselves, like the destroyed colonial records.
360 years ago is 1661. Shouldn't you count from at least 1688 "Glorious Revolution", when the current monarchy of Dutch ancestry invaded?
Or, if you mean the UK, count from the Act of Union 1707, before which the UK did not exist as such?
Or, counting "peaceful", from the end of the suppression of the Stuart monarchy in 1746?
Or, counting "UK" again, the distinctly non-peaceful transition of power of part of the UK to Dublin in 1922? The consequent violence of which only ended in 1998?
(especially if you're going to try to count the US Jan 6 incident as "not peaceful transition of power"! You have to overlook a lot of UK electoral violence if that's your threshold)
The monarchy have largely managed to steer clear of this in the 20th century, although there was a near miss when Edward married a fascist spy and had to be forced out. Undoubtedly the influence of Prince Philip whose family were indeed exiled from Greece at gunpoint made a difference. The Queen has been very cautious.
Compared to what went on on the Continent from around 1790 to 1950, the UK (and it's predecessors) has been an absolute beacon of stability and continued governance, even if there's been some issues.
If you can't measure a system of government by the relative peace and stability maintained while it is in place, what do you want to measure it by instead?
I'd attack the premise of the question. There is no single measure.
That doesn't make peace and stability a good measure. North Korea has managed a few decades of that, are they much better governed than the USA (for all its faults)?
Look closely at your measure, the UK has fought 2 Iraq wars, an afghan one, one in the Falklands, another in Yeman, Lebanon, Kosovo, Bosnia, Libya and Sierra Leone all on my short lifetime. So the claim UK Gov provides peace doesn't look great does it? Not compared to say Germany or France (republics).
The truth is, there is no strong justification for any one given form of government or for the House of Windsor.
You asked why we weren't being attacked by trolls and you want to attack the premise of my question?
I think the French have gone through five republics in less than the last 500 years for example if you want to compare to them. Also been occupied.
And I’m not sure comparing to Germany is a great idea…
Fundamentally the reason we have a monarchy is because most people like it. It reigns with consent. That's in extremely sharp contrast to the leaders of almost all other countries. 50% of Americans will by design always detest their president.
Hey, I just pointed out there is no hard evidence linking peaceful power transfer to the house of Windsor (or their previous equivalents). Plenty of monarchies fall apart, plenty of republics don't.
The UK-style constitutional monarchy can be argued as being in reality (rather than on paper) more democratic than the US-style republic:
Although the "I may be one some day" point is true, its also very unrealistic to the point of being near-impossible; and in the UK case we aren't talking about a small percentage of the population (as in, eg. the US) that has the dreamed of status that won't ever be attained, just a handful of individuals who have it. That's just the ultra-billionaires and celebrities and doesn't take into account the clear familial traditions of those who are elected to run the country and their senior staff (Kennedys, Bushes, Trumps etc.).
So its kind of comparing 10 people in the entire country (UK) who have a status that you know will never have vs several hundred (US) who have it; just the latter has a smaller-than-lottery (?) chance of the average Joe getting there compared to next-to-zero (revolution or massive constitutional change) of the former.
Having established that the former set are "different", we then unify and either venerate them or revolt against them according to personal preference.
When you then add in the regal mystique, charisma and authority granted to holders of office with actual power like, say, [fill in your bogeyman President here], having a separate unelected, symbolic but powerless national figurehead - who genuinely represents all of us - starts to look like a much more attractive - and democratic - proposition.
I'm British and not part of that 60%, and am fervently hoping this support declines more rapidly when the current monarch dies in the next few years or so. I think a lot of the respect for the monarchy here is driven by a personal respect for the Queen. The rest being our deep-seated cultural problem of class deference.
My personal opinion is that in addition to abolishing the monarchy, the state should seize all of their private assets, and every member of the royal family should be exiled. This is probably an even less popular opinion, but I think it's the only proper way to rid Britain of this parasitic family.
> Are any of the 60% around that could explain their thoughts?
If you ask a monarchist, they'll usually lean on one of two arguments: the financial and the traditional.
The former is the flawed belief that the monarchy is a money-maker for the UK and that it would be financially imprudent to abolish them. Usually this argument is based on the Crown Estate providing income for the Treasury, and the implied assumption that if the monarchy were abolished then that income would be gone, even though the lands are still there and there's no reason why the new republican government couldn't just seize the Estate as part of this abolishment. There's also the tourism income conjecture, but plenty of ex-monarchies have a strong tourism sector, and presumably there'd be a Royal Family Museum for tourists to visit in the new republic.
The latter is driven by cultural inertia and tends to be what monarchists lean on when the financial argument has been demolished. The talking points usually revolve around who would be the next head of state then, how could Britain possibly function without the monarchy, and so on.
Perhaps some monarchists would disagree with this characterisation of their beliefs, but having argued with many of them, these are my observations.
An ancient and hereditary monarchy devoid of political power is the easiest way of providing an apolitical head of state.
In the terms of the UK, the monarchy is interwoven with the national identity; it is its link to its past in human form. Most British people don't despise everything that has been done in the name of their country, and hence see the pragmatism of the constitutional settlement the UK landed on as the acceptable adjustment required to maintain something resembling a democracy.
Is not that the 60% are in favor of the monarchy; it’s that the 60% are in favor of no change... they are conservative, and any significant change scares them.
A very important, stabilising segment of every society. Don't know what the optimal amount is, but clearly history teaches us that too many or too few of such conservatives can lead to disaster. The British system's incredible staying power (especially for a country of some note, and not a tiny state on the periphery of history) suggests theirs is something like an optimal percentage.
Probably not. Monarchies usually aren't abolished spontaneously but due to revolutions and similar crisis. Since the UK hasn't had one in a while, there just was no opportunity to abolish the monarchy.
Also the UK has only been a democracy since 1928. A democracy without universal suffrage isn't one.
Yes, of course a democracy without universal suffrage can be one. In fact, the UK was more of a democracy before universal suffrage than many formally democratic states with universal suffrage today. This is because democracy is not solely, or even approximately defined by the mere act of casting a ballot.
Of course not, universal suffrage is merely a necessary condition for democracy. Many formally democratic states of today arguably aren't democratic either.
By the standards of its time, I'm sure the UK was already democratic back then. But not by today's.
People who know they have no merit don't support a meritocracy. They like a nice hard hierarchy and a birth lottery. This is one of the unspoken truths of the British system.
It's not, nor it really is in the UK itself. Certainly those who are titled as "upper class" as accepted by their peers, are nearly purely hereditary, but these people don't hold the bulk of money even there. Most cash in UK is in the hands of foreigners (many naturalised), i.e. earned abroad - the proverbial Russian oligarchs and Arab oil sheikhs.
And there's no problem about the Crown Estate. Profits from it go to the government, apart from the small part which is spent to maintain the royal household (those amounts are not exorbitant by any measure and it is amusing that the royals are able to do with so little, take literally every "person from TV" and they spend more). Only way in which Crown Estate is different from government property is that if in any case monarchy is abolished in the future, it will be returned to the royal family - now private citizens - to become their "normal" private property.
Only bad part about UK (and European in general) culture in that sense is that it's incredibly hard to "make it" locally. Indeed, most rich people either inherited their wealth, or just brought it from abroad having made it there (usually in some dirty ways). But this is a logical consequence of welfare state: in Europe, we don't let anyone fall through the cracks, social assistance system is truly comprehensive and there is not so much disparity in incomes. If you don't have any losers, you don't have any winners either: there is no way to have the cake and eat it too.
I haven't claimed it is, but see: if we make taxes high enough, especially progressive taxes, we avoid poverty, but we also prevent accumulation of wealth.
If we have employment laws that make it difficult to fire people, we have job security, but we also don't have any startups (how do you hire people there if it can go bust and you can't easily fire them, and why would anyone go to work somewhere where job isn't secure while elsewhere it is?).
There are many ways in which it works, and bottom line is: you either have crowds of bums, piss and shit and needles in the street but also ways to get rich from nothing if you work hard, as in the US, or you have neither, as in Europe. It's about choices. Letting people win big means making many more people lose.
Cynical approach is to do business and invest money in the US, and live in Europe. Which is actually what i recommend and what i do myself. With full understanding that i am living in a dead end place which is about to become sort of a living museum already in my lifetime, a human zoo.
They had ghettos of squat houses/shacks with literally rivers of shit, rampant prostitution and addictions, and gang rule though. And yes, legally and physically segregated.
And also, back then there weren't really any startups.
And they had it only because rest of the world nearly killed one another with US being the only country that managed to sit the WWII out.
I grew up in crown estate housing and it was well known to be the best social housing around. Much better than Peabody etc.
In fact when austerity came in and they had to sell it, there were massive campaigns to fight it being sold off.
I am a republican for the record.