Massively increasing the density of housing and improving transport links to central London within the M25 would make much more sense than building extensions to the increasing number of dormitory towns that are springing up across the Home Counties. Look at somewhere like Woldingham Station, within the M25, 30min direct to Victoria Station, yet surrounded by fields, it makes no sense. Build decent quality, pretty, and affordable 3/4 floor high terraced housing in Woldingam and other similar places within the M25 and I bet a lot of long distance commuters would move. As a Westminster based Civil Servant with a 2 hour commute each way, I would in a heartbeat. If you are talking about space-mining type pipe dreams, using this model, it would probably be possible to build millions of houses within the M25, more than enough for those who currently commute from dormitory towns. You could then knock down a lot of the ugly post-war housing that has scared towns across the Home Counties and return the land to farming and to nature to act as a larder and bucolic escape for Londoners.
Why would this "make sense"? Why is it intrinsically better to allocate green to the privileged people who live outside the M25 and denied it for those inside? You imagine the neat little bijou model village around Woldingham, but to make any dent whatsoever in the housing problem it would have to be development on a much larger scale.
Some people like neat sounding "geometric" solutions to almost any problem! Many areas inside the M25 have worse public transport connections - and have no have no realistic prospect of getting much better ones - than places outside. This was one of the reasons that the New Towns were established in the first place. The expansion of Welwyn Garden City, Hatfield and Crawley etc seems to be just as reasonable a response as filling up every last square inch of space within the M25
I never understood people's attachment to social housing in 'nicer' neighbourhoods. I am council house kid so I don't say this out of snobbery. The idea seems to be to mix people of different backgrounds, but in my experience there is very little 'mixing' going on. The people in social housing tend to be suspicious of their wealthier neighbours and even resent them. Whereas the period house owning class tends to champion the policy of social housing being placed on their doorstep whilst simultaneously insulating themselves from any contact with the occupiers of them.
Paris' much maligned banlieues are perhaps not desirable either, but we shouldn't have to pretend London has got this right. Working class communities seem a lot more at ease with themselves in places like Thurrock or Havering and I put this down to people preferring to be amongst their own and not being awkwardly engineered into some utopian project that doesn't deliver what it promises.
A rail project I would like to see in the capital: an express underground loop that would quickly link all of London's rail terminuses, stopping nowhere else. At the moment, especially with luggage, it can be quite a bore getting between, say, King's Cross and Waterloo. So my proposed Brunel Line whizzes rapidly in a loop between Paddington, Marylebone, Euston, Kings Cross St Pancras, Liverpool Street, Fenchurch Street, Charing Cross, Waterloo and Victoria.
If it works, Paris can have one too. The Hexagone Line will quickly link the Gare du Nord, Gare de l'Est, Gare de Lyon, Gare d'Austerlitz, Gare Montparnasse and Gare Saint-Lazare.
The problems is here that new railways are insanely expensive - we are talking hundreds of millions, probably over 1 billion pounds. This proposal would be by far from the best 'bang for bucks' use for another new line. The Circle line was built in the 19th century by the Metropolitan and Metropolitan District Railways for very much this purpose. But why in most cases would you go the long way round?! The stations are mostly linked in other ways, and there is simply no getting away from the need for lifts, escalators and (quite a lot of!) walking, such is the scale of underground rail interchange stations inevitably built on a number of levels.
'Lines on maps' - the origin of HS2! Conservatives (in particular) ought to be suspicious of that idea!
Ed, your 2022 article on housing topic was the first time I commented and I’m no more convinced now, than then, that building on the scale suggested, without effective control of immigration, would be anything other than a disaster . Also, while the efficiencies of a city in terms of specialisation and trade have been vital to date, as you say, how does that look as the virtual increasingly replaces the physical. Finally, isn’t city living a notorious negative on fertility rates.
there is an argument between liberal YIMBYs who want endless buildings and conservatives who want to reduce the pressure by reducing immigration hugely, but why not both?
Appreciate the point. Appreciate none of this is new or beyond your purview but here goes anyway: Cities trend multi ethnic and multi cultural. London has done so on roids, especially in the past 30 years. Being the capital this has had a huge impact on the culture of the country as a whole, which has become glaringly obvious since 2020. This impact includes reducing resistance to immigration. In a war, including presumably a culture war, one takes a country when one takes the cities. And cities tend to go left - even if as a meantime convenient coalition of unlikely allies. There was an indigenous British population of 85.7% in London in 1981. By 1991 it was still 79.8% - and the soap East Enders still make some sort of sense. Although by 1991 presumably some sort of tipping point had already been reached. By 2001 indigenous British made up just 59.8% and by 2021 just 36.8% of total population -hence Sadiq Khan’s third term as the king of the minority factions. To a not insignificant extent this demographic change is as a result of white flight on an close to unthinkable scale, although this pejorative term really just describes the universal tendency of ethnic and cultural groups to sort accordingly group preference (see link and maps), against which so called diversity policies rail whilst going against the grain as all leftist policies tend to. Adding housing into London would only tend to exacerbate these trends unless done incredibly carefully. Sorry, to bore on with this given you know more about this stuff than I. Also, people like a garden and a car.
Your dreams are beautiful but they are aimed at the London of the 1990s-2010s, not the medieval cesspit it has become. The building of new houses at the heart of your plan succeeds in only one sense: the Zone 5 suburb (to which we fled after the last set of riots) has morphed in less than 10 years from rus in urbe charm into just another Labour dump. The Tory borough that prided itself on building more houses than its Labour neighbours ... built its voter base out of electoral power. The only thing that would save our cities is still currently unprintable, thanks to the Overton window's current position.
I am anything but a progressive or even a Labour voter, but this this is just an extremist rant. I live in the London Borough of Lewisham in a stable suburban street; people seem mostly get on pretty well of all races and ethnicities, and the borough seems to do a reasonable good job on providing basic services.
Build a railway from Brixton to Richmond - intersection with Wimbledon. What a bizarre priority - a line passing underneath miles of Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park. Presumably this is particular journey you want to make yourself!
Turn the Westway into a railway - there is already a parallel railway - look at the map!!
Ed's policy proposal of limiting private car use still further is at at odds with his desire for improved roads so that he can more easily drive from Crouch End to Herne Hill! Therein in a nutshell is one of our main transport contradictions!
Let is be realistic - it is just not possible to make a public transport network as quick and convenient for every single journey as a private car travel on uncongested roads. However, building more roads in urban areas generates more traffic as the marginal cost of each individual journey diminishes. ("Ah, I can now drive to Kew Gardens more easily" perhaps!).
This is an easily understood economic phenomenon - to which we appear to be remarkable ignorant in our 'zero-sum' fixed cake thinking.! Teach basic economic thinking, not complicated economic formulae in schools perhaps!
And - unfortunately - railways are now almost insanely expensive to build. Ok, what taxes do we want to see increase (still further) to pay for more of them?
my road from Crouch End to Herne Hill would be tolled. You'd have to pay for it. roads are good, they are just scarce resources in cities so drivers should pay for them.
Massively increasing the density of housing and improving transport links to central London within the M25 would make much more sense than building extensions to the increasing number of dormitory towns that are springing up across the Home Counties. Look at somewhere like Woldingham Station, within the M25, 30min direct to Victoria Station, yet surrounded by fields, it makes no sense. Build decent quality, pretty, and affordable 3/4 floor high terraced housing in Woldingam and other similar places within the M25 and I bet a lot of long distance commuters would move. As a Westminster based Civil Servant with a 2 hour commute each way, I would in a heartbeat. If you are talking about space-mining type pipe dreams, using this model, it would probably be possible to build millions of houses within the M25, more than enough for those who currently commute from dormitory towns. You could then knock down a lot of the ugly post-war housing that has scared towns across the Home Counties and return the land to farming and to nature to act as a larder and bucolic escape for Londoners.
Why would this "make sense"? Why is it intrinsically better to allocate green to the privileged people who live outside the M25 and denied it for those inside? You imagine the neat little bijou model village around Woldingham, but to make any dent whatsoever in the housing problem it would have to be development on a much larger scale.
Some people like neat sounding "geometric" solutions to almost any problem! Many areas inside the M25 have worse public transport connections - and have no have no realistic prospect of getting much better ones - than places outside. This was one of the reasons that the New Towns were established in the first place. The expansion of Welwyn Garden City, Hatfield and Crawley etc seems to be just as reasonable a response as filling up every last square inch of space within the M25
I never understood people's attachment to social housing in 'nicer' neighbourhoods. I am council house kid so I don't say this out of snobbery. The idea seems to be to mix people of different backgrounds, but in my experience there is very little 'mixing' going on. The people in social housing tend to be suspicious of their wealthier neighbours and even resent them. Whereas the period house owning class tends to champion the policy of social housing being placed on their doorstep whilst simultaneously insulating themselves from any contact with the occupiers of them.
Paris' much maligned banlieues are perhaps not desirable either, but we shouldn't have to pretend London has got this right. Working class communities seem a lot more at ease with themselves in places like Thurrock or Havering and I put this down to people preferring to be amongst their own and not being awkwardly engineered into some utopian project that doesn't deliver what it promises.
ctrl+f "immigration" and "deportation" yields no results
It's funny, I've always advocated walls be installed around globalist cities, but more to keep the progressives in, rather than the noise.
A rail project I would like to see in the capital: an express underground loop that would quickly link all of London's rail terminuses, stopping nowhere else. At the moment, especially with luggage, it can be quite a bore getting between, say, King's Cross and Waterloo. So my proposed Brunel Line whizzes rapidly in a loop between Paddington, Marylebone, Euston, Kings Cross St Pancras, Liverpool Street, Fenchurch Street, Charing Cross, Waterloo and Victoria.
If it works, Paris can have one too. The Hexagone Line will quickly link the Gare du Nord, Gare de l'Est, Gare de Lyon, Gare d'Austerlitz, Gare Montparnasse and Gare Saint-Lazare.
A friend of mine who works in policy says that is possible apparently. I asked him the same thing.
The problems is here that new railways are insanely expensive - we are talking hundreds of millions, probably over 1 billion pounds. This proposal would be by far from the best 'bang for bucks' use for another new line. The Circle line was built in the 19th century by the Metropolitan and Metropolitan District Railways for very much this purpose. But why in most cases would you go the long way round?! The stations are mostly linked in other ways, and there is simply no getting away from the need for lifts, escalators and (quite a lot of!) walking, such is the scale of underground rail interchange stations inevitably built on a number of levels.
'Lines on maps' - the origin of HS2! Conservatives (in particular) ought to be suspicious of that idea!
Ed, your 2022 article on housing topic was the first time I commented and I’m no more convinced now, than then, that building on the scale suggested, without effective control of immigration, would be anything other than a disaster . Also, while the efficiencies of a city in terms of specialisation and trade have been vital to date, as you say, how does that look as the virtual increasingly replaces the physical. Finally, isn’t city living a notorious negative on fertility rates.
there is an argument between liberal YIMBYs who want endless buildings and conservatives who want to reduce the pressure by reducing immigration hugely, but why not both?
Appreciate the point. Appreciate none of this is new or beyond your purview but here goes anyway: Cities trend multi ethnic and multi cultural. London has done so on roids, especially in the past 30 years. Being the capital this has had a huge impact on the culture of the country as a whole, which has become glaringly obvious since 2020. This impact includes reducing resistance to immigration. In a war, including presumably a culture war, one takes a country when one takes the cities. And cities tend to go left - even if as a meantime convenient coalition of unlikely allies. There was an indigenous British population of 85.7% in London in 1981. By 1991 it was still 79.8% - and the soap East Enders still make some sort of sense. Although by 1991 presumably some sort of tipping point had already been reached. By 2001 indigenous British made up just 59.8% and by 2021 just 36.8% of total population -hence Sadiq Khan’s third term as the king of the minority factions. To a not insignificant extent this demographic change is as a result of white flight on an close to unthinkable scale, although this pejorative term really just describes the universal tendency of ethnic and cultural groups to sort accordingly group preference (see link and maps), against which so called diversity policies rail whilst going against the grain as all leftist policies tend to. Adding housing into London would only tend to exacerbate these trends unless done incredibly carefully. Sorry, to bore on with this given you know more about this stuff than I. Also, people like a garden and a car.
Demography of London - Wikipedia
Your dreams are beautiful but they are aimed at the London of the 1990s-2010s, not the medieval cesspit it has become. The building of new houses at the heart of your plan succeeds in only one sense: the Zone 5 suburb (to which we fled after the last set of riots) has morphed in less than 10 years from rus in urbe charm into just another Labour dump. The Tory borough that prided itself on building more houses than its Labour neighbours ... built its voter base out of electoral power. The only thing that would save our cities is still currently unprintable, thanks to the Overton window's current position.
I am anything but a progressive or even a Labour voter, but this this is just an extremist rant. I live in the London Borough of Lewisham in a stable suburban street; people seem mostly get on pretty well of all races and ethnicities, and the borough seems to do a reasonable good job on providing basic services.
Bring back Routemasters
Bring back London Irish RFC.
Get an NFL / NBA franchise- Could this double with the Sphere?
Build a railway from Brixton to Richmond - intersection with Wimbledon
Turn the Westway into a railway
Clean out the criminal element off Westminster Bridge.
No empty buildings - There is a blockbuster video. on Chiswick highroad. Turn that into a boujee apartment
Build a railway from Brixton to Richmond - intersection with Wimbledon. What a bizarre priority - a line passing underneath miles of Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park. Presumably this is particular journey you want to make yourself!
Turn the Westway into a railway - there is already a parallel railway - look at the map!!
My comment was spitballing.
1- Westway is horrible I have to cross it everyday walking to work.
2- I was trying to get to Wimbledon AFC ground it was a nuisance
I don't know what "spitballing" actually is!
Also, construct more Champagne dispensaries for a party atmosphere - English Champagne especially in the coming decades!:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/english-sparkling-wines-challenge-supremacy-champagne-francethanks-climate-change-180974057/
red wine pouring from the city's pipes after every military victory.
And which military would this be exactly? ;-)
Most of these should apply to all UK cities. Also Manchester does have a "night tsar", Sacha Lord.
yeah, that's why I said most not all. he's like the Bulgarian tsar to London's tsar of all Russias.
Boat Race Sunday as a month. Invite Harvard, Yale etc.
Jack the Ripper - Halloween festival
Build a bridge between Kew Gardens and Syon House
I think I read this at the time but it didn't make much of an impression on me. I have just re-read it and thought it wonderful.
thank you!
Ed's policy proposal of limiting private car use still further is at at odds with his desire for improved roads so that he can more easily drive from Crouch End to Herne Hill! Therein in a nutshell is one of our main transport contradictions!
Let is be realistic - it is just not possible to make a public transport network as quick and convenient for every single journey as a private car travel on uncongested roads. However, building more roads in urban areas generates more traffic as the marginal cost of each individual journey diminishes. ("Ah, I can now drive to Kew Gardens more easily" perhaps!).
This is an easily understood economic phenomenon - to which we appear to be remarkable ignorant in our 'zero-sum' fixed cake thinking.! Teach basic economic thinking, not complicated economic formulae in schools perhaps!
And - unfortunately - railways are now almost insanely expensive to build. Ok, what taxes do we want to see increase (still further) to pay for more of them?
my road from Crouch End to Herne Hill would be tolled. You'd have to pay for it. roads are good, they are just scarce resources in cities so drivers should pay for them.
that's a great idea. the green by my school is really covered in rubbish