But even in the capital, too many local hubs are struggling – while even some of the more successful ones seem characterised by a grimly repeating module, like the scrolling background in an old Hanna-Barbera cartoon: an infinite loop of betting shops, Tescos, kebab joints and faded Oxfam outlets.
Until he quit as work and pensions secretary in a failed attempt to oust Gordon Brown last year, James Purnell's career seemed characterised by uncommon good fortune, a talent for forging connections and a deft ability to make the most of any opportunity.
Beautiful decay seems to characterise the aesthetic of most of Lisbon's nightlife quarters.
Left wing remains a problem position and the jamming of square pegs seems to characterise the search for the solution.
But in this instance, theological incoherence is clearly better than the kind of demented and hideous consistency that seems to characterise the Westboro Baptist Church.
The piece straddled the common divide between "look at those wacky Aussies" and "hey, maybe these people have a point", which seems to characterise the US' attitude toward our policies on health and guns.
Bill Buford, the New Yorker's fiction editor, found it hard to explain why he had selected this particular first XI, agreeing that "no one generalisation seems to characterise Indian fiction".
It was a quiet news day but a couple of writers mentioned that two interesting things had happened on television over the weekend: one was Cilla Black's on-air resignation from Blind Date, the other the screening of a new show, Without Predjudice?, that seemed emblematic of the meanness that seems to characterise so much successful TV programming these days.
That sense of hard-won surprise seems to characterise his own effort; he has painted the road outside his studio more times in the last half-century than he would probably care to remember, but each time you stand witness to him making it new.
However, in what might be construed as the kind of retaliatory swipe that seems to characterise the pair's amusing bickering married couple schtik, Wiggins confirmed rumours that Cavendish had not been included in the team because he had not been good enough in training and was unable to keep up with the rest of the team.
