That's an interesting take, which contradicts what I know. I'd be interested in reading some specialist literature on that.
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The biggest subsidy is the supply of people, although these days much of those come from outside of the UK rather than other regions in the UK. Other places (and people in those places) bear the cost of making and raising the new people, and London (and other metros) gain the productivity from those new people.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/dvc2872/fig03/index.ht...
Yeah, that is expected I speculate. Or maybe it isn't, depending of how one chooses to look at things. But it's not public subsidies, as it actually runs the highest surplus, both in absolute terms and per capita: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/may/23/uk-budget-d...
UK taxes are gathered centrally to London and then redistributed to the so called regions. The bulk of British government infrastructure is based in and around there, as is the BBC and a big chunk of royal spending (as royals and their employees live in Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle (just outside London) for much of the year).
None of that will counted as "public subsidy" but collectively that will run into the billions. All those politicians, civil servants and BBC employees based there are spending UK public money to eat, sleep and travel within the city.
If a place like Liverpool had all that instead of London, then it would be Merseyside mysteriously generating a high surplus.
The biggest subsidy is the presence of government/civil service and royal "machinery", which ensures a steady flow of public money into the area before we even look at the vast amounts spent on London's infrastructure.
Much of British transport infrastructure is also designed to feed people into London (although London is less bad for that than Paris which is the hub of nearly all the French rail network.) The Channel Tunnel certainly does. Even the motorway and rail networks of Wales do to some extent.
Government and civil service departments are mostly based in and around London, as is most BBC infrastructure/HQ.
London has umpteen infrastructure updates whether motorways or underground lines. Also vanity projects such as the Garden Bridge which cost tens of millions without ever being built, or the Wembley Stadium refit which cost than the Scottish Parliament building (but garnered a fraction of the negative press.)
I believe London is one of the only parts of the UK that generates more tax revenue than it uses.
In general, denser cities are more efficient in very measure. It makes sense, you have the same amount of stuff with less space and less materials.
Basically everywhere the way it works is that the non-cities are on perpetual welfare from the cities because the cities have all the economy, but you still have to run miles of roads and sewage into the non-cities.
It generates more revenue because it is continually having infrastructure improvements, being boosted by the media and has numerous government departments etc based there.
The Garden Bridge project alone swallowed tens of millions and remained completely unbuilt. That money could have been better spent elsewhere with greater results.
It really couldn't have, because it's investment. The government invests in London because it has proven, and continues to prove, it pays off.
Yes it's true that the rest of the UK could benefit from more investment and that MIGHT make otherwise economically defunct areas slightly less economically defunct. Keyword might. London is a "will", not a might.
London has been getting inward investment for centuries, not just recently. Even today its prestige is partly from being a former imperial capital (like Vienna or Paris).
If you look at the geography of London it makes for a good port area for bringing goods to and from continental Europe, but it no longer does that like it used to. In the past it was highly dependent on coal from Yorkshire, South Wales etc and materials from elsewhere whether wool or metals. In the 1980s, the London stock market was bankrolled by North Sea oil, mostly in northern English and Scottish waters. Nowadays, London's chief thing is the finance industry and stock market, but that is not location dependent at all, and very easily transferred somewhere else which puts London in a more unsafe position than it realises. Like most major cities, it consumes a great deal of energy and gets its water from elsewhere (and some recycling).