For the most part the level of impoverishment is hidden from the public and is increasingly being disbursed to the outer suburbs of the city, as even the traditionally poor areas of East and South London have experienced skyrocketing housing costs.

London is increasingly reflective of a bifurcated and stratified Europe in the aftermath of the great recession that was in many ways far worse than in America and in which some countries like Greece and Portugal experienced unemployment reaching as high as 50 percent. Germany, Monaco and the Scandinavian countries went largely unscathed due to their more conservative fiscal policies.

The resulting situation in Europe resembles a barbell. There has been a massive increase in the poverty level overall in Europe, even as the European economies have recovered from the recession. And there are also increasingly pockets of immense wealth - especially in major cities like London, where people with the means have escaped the political turmoil and oppression of their respective countries and sought refuge in a gilded cosmopolitan enclave that looks less like Old Europe and more like Disneyland.

In London, for the first time in modern history, the percentage of the middle class has sunk below 50 percent of the population, with almost thirty percent falling below the poverty line and a quarter of the population qualifying as wealthy. This squeezing-out of the middle class is likely to have significant social and political implications for these countries, including questions about the continued legitimacy of nationalism and democracy.

One of the most important questions is whether national identity will continue to play a major role in Europe. There has already been significant migration of both labor and capital within Europe from the struggling peripheral nations to the more robust central economies. However, that migration has also exacerbated ethnic tensions and concerns over terrorism and security - as evidenced by the attacks last summer at Charlie Hebdo.

Europe looks from up close like a construction project that has been interrupted. The basic structure of the new edifice is apparent - ease of travel between the countries and a (struggling) common currency - but the rest of the building is missing. In many ways the wealthy act as though they are an island entirely unto themselves, while the swelling numbers of the poor cast off outside the walls of the city-state are left to question the redeemable value of their national identity.