Make London even greater

Sensible policies for a happier city

The London mayoral election is coming soon, with the odds being strongly in favour of incumbent Sadiq Khan winning a third term.

But whoever wins, I’d like to suggest some ideas that could improve our city. Some are more practical than others, and some I admit are a bit eccentric. My main inspiration is looking at what has been successful in other cities, and where things work better than London.

Remember a few years back there was a Ukip candidate who listed all his policy proposals and towards the end he slipped in his idea of mining Saturn’s moons and the asteroid belt, which was part of his plan for an interstellar colony ship and nano-probe fleet. I rather admire that sort of spirit, and some of my ideas towards the end are a bit of the asteroid-mining variety, but others are more practical.

Get London building

Housing is probably the number one priority for the city. Plans for a million new homes are welcome, but the question is how we achieve it. Tokyo has done well to deregulate its housing market, but there are lots of other things that could help.

We could make it easier to build near railway stations, as recently suggested by Britain Remade. The group also proposes that we remove the ‘strategic industrial land’ designations (pictured below, their map), therefore allowing us to build houses there. Perhaps we could allow upward extensions on historic properties so long as they are in keeping with the original design. 

But probably the best way to improve the housing situation is an idea called estate regeneration, as architecture critic Samuel Hughes explains here. This essentially means rebuilding low density, post-war housing in the capital, using the revenue from the sales of extra property to create improved housing for social tenants.

As an example, a proposal in Poplar, east London would mean replacing 330 existing homes with 1,582 new properties, of which around 450 would be subsidised. If you rolled this model out across London, you’d make a serious difference to housing affordability.

Houston, Texas, also provides an interesting model that London might follow, allowing neighbourhoods to become more high-density while other areas opt out and stay the same.

The housing crisis also drives that modern-day scourge, homelessness, which Helsinki has probably done more than any other issue to tackle. Homelessness has multiple causes, including divorce, substance addiction, a decline in hospital beds and post-2010 social care cuts, but building more homes clearly reduces the problem. 

Make London Beautiful 

London needs more ‘third spaces’, open squares where people can meet and chat. The eastern part of the South Bank stretching towards Tower Bridge has been a great improvement, but we need more squares, many of which could be built where roads currently predominate: the spot where Tower Bridge Road meets the A2, for example, or St George’s Circus in SE1, which could be a lively meeting point rather than a roundabout.

Another example is where the Hammersmith flyover currently cuts through an otherwise pleasant neighbourhood. That could be demolished to make way for homes, as could the Westway over Notting Hill. Maybe it would make economic sense to build a tunnel to replace those roads, but I can’t see how motorways running through expensive areas of cities really make sense.

We saw this week how the owners of the Crooked House pub in Staffordshire had to rebuild their iconic building, a ruling which has been applied in several previous cases where a structure has been illegally demolished. It’s satisfying, even though the new building won’t be the same as the old in the Ship of Theseus sense (AKA Trigger’s Broom).

There is nothing to stop us applying this ruling on a grander scale. As mayor of London I’d make it my first task to rebuild Euston station – whereas the current proposal for Euston III is awful, including the new HS2 headhouse.

I would also put my weight behind rebuilding the Imperial Institute, the Army and Navy club, Queen’s Hall, Columbia Market Hall, perhaps even St Luke's hospital in Old Street, now a dreary and depressing stretch of post-war architecture. The taxpayer wouldn’t need to get involved; the mayor could simply say that if private investors were interested in restoring the buildings for whatever use, s/he would support them.

We would vastly improve our city by reversing some of the architectural mistakes of the past, something many continental equivalents have done. Frankfurt, heavily damaged by Allied aerial bombing in the war, has begun rebuilding its medieval city, following the example of places like Warsaw and Dresden. 

At some point we could move all the brutalist buildings out of London and put them in a temperate rainforest village which would be popular as a holiday resort or artist colony (yes I admit this idea is a bit asteroid-mining). I like the idea of these iconic brutalist buildings existing somewhere for people to go and look at; I just don’t ever want to see any of them on my way into town.

Get London moving

I don’t think Khan has done an altogether terrible job, and he’s made some progress on cycling. Admittedly, London could not be as bike-centred as Copenhagen, which transformed its previous car domination, or Amsterdam, the gold standard for bicycle-based transport policy, but we’re still probably somewhat behind Seville, which has turned itself into a leading cycling city, and even Paris, which used to be one of the worst cities for cyclists but is now arguably better than London.

Copenhagen has also shown the wisdom of pedestrianising central city streets, and has proven wrong those who warned about declining footfall; Oxford Street will be the first to go pedestrian-only under the West terror.

I think more car restrictions are inevitable and necessary, and road pricing is a good idea. Singapore, which seems like a pretty well-run place, has the Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) system, with charges for entering the city centre varying by time of day and is periodically revised in order to maintain traffic speeds. London’s current Congestion Zone reduces traffic and raises money, but it’s not sensitive to where the most demand is. 

It’s one of those things which some Conservatives will resist but, once it happens, no one will want to go back. I can understand why Tory politicians wish to stand up for the motorist, because in rural or suburban areas with poor transport links cars are a necessity, but in most of London they aren’t, and bring huge downsides. (Maybe exceptions could be made for people who need a van for work.) 

Tokyo, meanwhile, has hugely improved city life by removing most on-street parking, which takes up a huge amount of space, while recently Amsterdam also removed 10,000 parking spaces to create more room for bicycles and pedestrians. 

We could also start charging a fee for new resident parking spots, as suggested by Matthew Yglesias, which would make it easier to build more homes.

Get London partying

Considering London is supposed to be an ‘Alpha ++ global city’, whatever that means, its nightlife is quite poor.

We have a ‘night tsar’, who was last summer awarded the freedom of the city for her work; this in the same city where Gregg’s couldn’t sell a sausage roll in Leicester Square after a certain time. As one wit put it after Amy Lamé’s award, ‘Dare I suggest there's still work to do’. 

The night tsar’s £117,000 salary isn’t the problem; an individual who successfully increased the night-time economy would be worth far more than that. The problem is that London’s late-night venues have been closing at a steady rate while the Night Time Industries Association say that Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol and other cities now have far more late night options, despite being far smaller and most having no ‘night tsar’. Apparently, even two of the success story venues touted by our night tsar in her defence have shut down! Lamé is surely the most ineffective tsar since the insane Peter III had a rat court-martialed.

Across the water, Dublin and Cork have far more relaxed late night licensing laws. In Cork some pubs are open until 2am, even if most chose to close much earlier, while in London nightlife is still in many ways very restrictive.

I suspect that this is further aggravated by the housing crisis; when I was a teenager, the bar staff in our local mostly lived in the immediate neighbourhood, but now they would have to commute much longer distances and that makes late-night working less desirable.

But it’s mostly to do with the power of local councils, a similar problem with street dining. One of the few good things about the pandemic was that restaurants were allowed to take over many streets, especially in Soho. It seems reasonable that, in summer at least, restaurants in non-thoroughfares should be able to take over the street. We could even allow restaurants and bars to buy the parking spaces outside their premises.

The Lithuanian capital Vilnius turned its streets into vast open-air cafes to help businesses struggling during the pandemic, and they kept it that way. It was the same with Paris - but Soho reverted back to traffic domination, which seems inexplicable. 

One of the main blockages to both street dining and late-night opening is Britain’s fun police, also known as Westminster Council. This is the authority which famously shut down Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney at Hyde Park because of noise, an episode of our modern history that was quintessentially British. 

This is because the council is responsible to the small number of people who live and vote in the West End, not to the millions of Londoners who work and eat there and keep the area’s economy going.

Perhaps this seems harsh, but if you live in Soho you need to accept that there will be partying at night. Loud music, especially bass-heavy music, can be anti-social and can be restricted, but the sound of cutlery and chatter late into the night is part of city life.

I think there is an argument that certain functions should be taken out of local council control in the centre of London and given to the mayor, since these central areas belong to the city as a whole. As mayor I would take licensing powers away from inner city boroughs and make them my responsibility; the same goes for parking and planning, which would also be better run on a city-wide basis rather than suiting narrow local interests. 

Make London civil

Crime in London is not terrible; it’s not even especially historically high, it’s just far higher than it should be, especially considering that we live in a surveillance society.

The mayor can’t do much about the criminal justice system, nor is the Metropolitan Police fully in his control, but s/he could do something about the presence of police officers walking the streets, which has a big psychological impact. One major problem is the closure of police stations, which is hugely demoralising to those affected (our local one shut down). Even if we can’t reopen them all, the Japanese have small neighbourhood police huts called kobans which could prove reassuring.

Quality of life crimes like bike, phone and laptop theft are often the work of a relatively small number of perpetrators, and the mayor could hugely improve city life by focusing on those. I would love for the Met to carry out sting operations on phone and bike thieves, and put lots of them away. Imagine how much better life would be if you could leave your bike minimally locked up while you went out for the night without worrying about it – because potential thieves had a realistic fear that it was bait, and they’d go to jail if they took it. It’s a relatively achievable goal, we just lack the will.

A bigger problem is basic civility. The mayor should promise to crack down on people playing loud music on public transport, but also people in general disturbing the peace. Street preachers should not be allowed to use amplified speakers, as is now a routine feature of the West End and which gives the place a terrible apocalyptic vibe.

I’d also like those Parisian noise cameras that fine you if your vehicle goes above a certain decibel level at night.

As for demonstrations. Every cause gets to use the West End for their protest – once a year, and no more.

London wants more trains

Crossrail 2 should go ahead, but so should Crossrail 3, 4, 5 and 6. The Metroland branch of the Metropolitan Line or the Chiltern Line could form the basis of one crossrail line, coming out the other side into Kent. I like the idea of the Betjeman Line, unless we stick to naming them after royals.

It’s even possible that Crossrail 2-6 could be funded entirely by land value capture and new development, with no burden on taxpayers. Certainly, we could extend many Tube lines further by getting locals to agree to planning permission around new stations, with the sale of houses funding the new rail services - in Japan, railway companies pay for extensions by speculating on the land. We could also fund these new lines by selling development rights above stations.

Now, the asteroid-mining

I also think that London should expand, and that perhaps the M25 makes the natural frontier; we could even build a wall around the expanded city to protect residents from the sounds of the traffic.

I could never be a populist politician because I have to admit that one of the most pressing issues for me is the length of time it takes to drive from Crouch End to Dulwich and Herne Hill to see friends. This could be made quicker with an underground, tolled, joined-up North and South circular with a 70 mph limit - while the street above is transformed into a calm tree-lined boulevard, each stretch named after a famous composer or philosopher.

We need to build the Sphere. Maybe Stratford is not the place, but we need build the Sphere somewhere.

I’d also like to rebuild London Bridge with houses on it. I don’t see why not; the current London Bridge is horrible.

Dutch cities are especially pretty because of the soothing presence of water. Perhaps we should consider bringing back some of the Thames’ tributaries, most of which are now sewers. The River Fleet, for example, has its source at Hampstead Heath, from where it gently flowed down through Gospel Oak, Camden Town, then in between today’s St Pancras and King’s Cross stations, before running into the Thames by the City. Imagine how much more charming that route would be with riverside bars, barges and boats heading up and down.

Some may say I’m a crank, but the same thing was said about many people in the past (many of whom, admittedly, turned out to be cranks). But imagine getting off the Eurostar from Paris and being able to get a river taxi up to Highgate? We can have nice things.