Planning in London

SPECIAL MEETING AT UCL on the London Plan Review: Minutes

Each of the presentations noted is published in the April 2006 issue of PiL

The early-July Forum meeting will follow-up this meeting at the invitation of the Deputy Mayor. This will precede the opening up of consultations to the publis in the Autumn. It will again be hosted by UCL. Look for details in April's PiL and under Next Meeting here.

Special meeting of the London Planning and Development Forum
At University College London 1st February 2005, 2.30-5.30 pm

Present:
Brian Waters: Chairman
Nicky Gavron: Deputy Mayor of London
Sir Peter Hall: UCL
Michael Edwards: UCL
Andy Thornley: LSE
Mark Janko: RMJM
Roger Chapman: GOL
Helen Keen: GOL
Richard Lee: King's Cross Railway Lands Group
Patrick Anderson: Planning Aid for London
Christine Whitehead: LSE
Arata Yamamoto: UCL/Bartlett
Pat Thomas: SJ Berwin/Law Society/TCPA
Tom Ball: London Forum
Christina Seaman: South London Partnership
Esther Kurland: CABE
Michael Bach: London Forum
Tim Wacher: RICS (London)
Martin Simmons: Consultant to ALG
Nigel Pallace: BPO/London Borough of Hammersmith
Sam Richards: Transport for London
Judith Ryser: UDAL
Simon Foxell: RIBA/TAP
Suzanne McGuire: UCL
John Lett: GLA
Tony Cumberbirch: GLA
Alex Bax: GLA
Drummond Robson: Consultant Planner/LPDF

1. Introductory Note

A Meeting was convened by University College London, supported by the London Planning and Development Forum and Chaired by Brian Waters to respond to the Mayor's Review of the London Plan and the Statement of Intent produced by him and GLA staff.

Deputy Mayor Nicky Gavron attended and represented the current position on the London Plan Review. She spoke following presentations by Michel Edwards, Sir Peter Hall, Drummond Robson and Martin Simmons.

Although the speakers' themes were not co-ordinated in advance there were several common strands to their thinking.

The collective concerns were:

• The present plan remains too centrist - a plan for zone 1, with undue emphasis on the International and National roles of London and too little emphasis on the wide diversity of the Capital's many activities, often small scale, but strategic in their collective significance and integral to the collective success of the capital. London is emerging to be more polycentric or even diffuse than this centrist thinking allows for.

• Containment is an unrealistic growth proposition in isolation from the adjoining sub regions and the government's sustainable communities policy. (notably Martin Simmons)

• The emphasis on the Thames Gateway is excessive against market forces and lacks proper coherence and, as Michael Edwards put it " failing to get the structure right - development parcels instead of streets and services (learning from the mistakes at Milton Keynes)".

• The Inner and Outer Suburban areas are poorly understood and poorly planned for. Sir Peter Hall proposed a suburban Orbinet multimodal public transport system to connect Outer Metropolitan Centres. Drummond Robson considered in particular the Outer suburbs and the combined impacts of home working and the car in producing a more complex and diffuse pattern of jobs, shopping and leisure activity than the present codified land use planning system is prepared to recognise.

The four papers are included in this edition of Planning in London, followed by the proposition from the mayor's office with a commentary derived from the very dynamic discussion which evolved.

2. Presentation by Michael Edwards

What if...

the next London Plan were better?

This seminar and series of papers aims to initiate professional debate about how the forthcoming London Plan Review process should differ from the original 2000-2004 process which led to the first spatial development strategy, The London Plan. This paper, the first in the seminar, refers to a large number of desiderata which have cropped up in recent meetings, expanding on those which are not taken up more fully by other contributors' papers.

The paper covers issues of procedure, of substance and of planning methodology.

Universities....

First, though, a comment on universities. London is very strong on universities and there should be a variety of fruitful relationships between them and the plan. The GLA team has commented, however, that they have found the higher education sector (HE) frustrating to consult, whether as a major sector of the economy or as source of ideas and expertise. We need to put this right [and it was good to hear that the Mayor was to hold a meeting with London's HE sector the day following our seminar]. One dimension of this is that universities should be a place for critical debate about planning, as about everything else, and the universities have not been discharging this responsibility very well. LSE and UCL do a bit, East London and Kingston contribute useful work on their sub-regions but I have a strong belief that awkward questions are not being asked often enough or well enough, and that the arrangements for critical engagement with the plan are underdeveloped. The present seminar is designed partly to correct this failing.

For a great city to plan its own future is a really major challenge in self-education and universities have hardly started to consider how their resources could be deployed to help Londoners, and the institutions of civil society in London, to widen and deepen our understanding of urban processes and of the options before us. In today's target-driven environment of public services (rather Soviet-style in lots of its effects), we have to reach and exceed the outputs set by government plans - for teaching, for profitability and for 5-star research. Contributions to public education and enlightenment do not figure as required outputs, which is wrong and needs to be addressed.

TINA and the planning procedures...

There has been, and remains, a democratic deficit in the production of plans in London.

The London Plan was a very bossy kind of planning in which we were effectively told that there is no alternative. London (i) has to welcome all the GDP and population growth in prospect, (ii) has to fit it within the green belt, (iii) has to concentrate much of the incremental employment in the centre and (iv) expand its transport networks to support this structure. None of these propositions is self-evidently true, indeed all are highly controversial and all have downsides and identifiable losers. Attempts to challenge these propositions, or seek to explore strategic alternatives or marginal alterations met with negative responses during the planning process and in the Examination in Public (EIP). We were effectively told that other scenarios had been explored and rejected, that mobile investment would go elsewhere or that we didn't understand. Certainly there was not much time, we 'outside the tent' were disorganised and the team did a heroic job in producing a plan so fast. But it was hardly a case of a city and its leaders exploring options for the future.

It is a profound weakness that the Statement of Intent on the plan review (Mayor of London 2005b) envisages a Plan which will be fundamentally the same: essentially the "vision" (i.e. the main objectives) is to remain unchanged, which would pre-empt most of the important discussions. The only real opening I can see for reconsidering the fundamentals is the new importance attached to sustainability, or at least to energy and global warming. Our hope is that, through this window, or otherwise, we can give the team un-answerable grounds for reconsidering some basic issues.

Perhaps a second opportunity may lie in the EU directive on Strategic Environmental Assessment, now incorporated into the mandatory Sustainability Assessment in the British system. I am not a lawyer but my impression is that the GLA will now be bound to elaborate and evaluate alternatives to major policy directions, the more so if key strategic alternatives are drawn to their attention at this early stage.

Substance...

Housing problems of the London region

London's growth is a poverty machine as well as a wealth machine, with much of the impoverishment being generated through the intensifying pressure of prices, rents and insecurity on low- and middle-income households. A few households (but only selected workers in the public services) can gain privileged access to housing as 'key workers'. Many more survive through housing benefit (though at a high and mounting cost to the exchequer, and with a severe 'benefit trap' effect). While we struggle to secure more social rented dwellings through Section 106, we loose stock through the Right to Buy and various privatisations. Furthermore many of the 'affordable' dwellings secured through S106 are not for social renting and many are mean in size or in local amenities.

High housing costs are bad for business too, adversely affecting the recruitment and retention of staff in many sectors of the London economy and pushing salaries up in many cases. Both results are damaging the competiveness of London's enterprises.

Many of us consider that the gravity of these problems is not appreciated within the plan (though the analysis is often better than the policy proposals) and that we need a complete re-think of growth strategies, tenure policy, subsidy regimes and land policy. The Mayor's quest for additional housing powers might help but not enough.

A recent paper delivered by Joseph Gyourko and others at the LSE argued that US cities which combined strong growth with very restrictive land supply had experienced a spiral of housing price rises (driven by buyers' expectations) which led to them squeezing out their low-and middle-income populations - effectively becoming cities in which only the rich can afford to live. This is equally true for London, as many of us have been pointing out for a long time, and we must insist that this crisis is tackled head-on and resolved. So there is a lot to do on housing.

Over-centralised employment and transport

Many of the issues of substance being raised in today's seminar are calls for more polycentric or diffused options for the employment structure. There are a number of strands to this argument which I could summarise as follows, with not all of us emphasising the same points, but Drummond Robson picking up many of them:

(i) If we want a London in which there is less need to travel (or less need to travel far) then more services and jobs (i.e. more destinations) need to be closer to where people live, which is overwhelmingly in the suburbs.

(ii) The infrastructure (and discomfort) costs of radial tidal-flow transport are high. Expanding capacity on the scale necessitated by the London Plan may be beyond our ability, or at least may be a bad investment compared with measures to improve orbital and inter-suburban transport. Peter Hall is a great source of inspiration on this issue. It's good to see his 'orbirail' proposal approaching fruition 15 years or so after he first floated it at the Land Use Society. It is also the subject of his paper in this seminar and of another (beyond the GLA boundary) published recently in Town and Country Planning (ref). I suspect there would be strong support in TfL if they were enabled to work on anything other than implementations of the London Plan mark 1.

(iii) I venture the hypothesis that we are loosing a lot of employment in the suburbs through the switching of land use to residential. I also venture that this employment is disproportionately in the less sexy sectors (with low value added per worker) in which a lot of our less-qualified workers are employed and in which many of those now outside the labour market would have best prospects of employment. Furthermore the products of these less exciting sectors are among the services which London needs. Where will you get your car serviced when all the garages are replaced by flats? Where will the salmon be smoked?

Where the jobs are in office buildings, this shows up as a failure of investor interest in suburban office markets - a topic on which my colleague Suzanne Maguire is working at the moment with Martin Simmons.

(iv) We have a huge unused capacity for reverse commuting which could better be taken up if we had more central area housing and more jobs at suburban nodes.

(v) If we take a broader regional view, as Martin Simmons argues in his paper here, there are numerous opportunities for a healthier symbiosis with adjacent areas, incorporating a good deal of London suburban employment growth.

(vi) The centralisation of growth is leading to intensified gentrification and business displacement in the central area fringe as we know from work at Kings Cross and elsewhere, and as the planning team fully admit in the Sub Regional Development Strategy for the Central Area (Mayor of London 2005a, para. 19).

More generally there is also the point of view that the planning system should work to even out disparities in accessibility since the market will be the determinant of who gets the best locations - and cities with fewer internal disparities will be fairer, more democratic ones. This was the guiding principle of Cerda's famous plan for Barcelona and of its new plan in the 1970s.

We also have to acknowledge that polycentric cities only develop with some pretty strong planned interventions to structure the market. The success of Paris in promoting La Défense and Marne-la-Valée reflects in part the constraints imposed on central area growth. In contrast we should also note the total defeat of Friedmann Kunst's 1990 plan for a newly-unified Berlin by the unwillingness of the planning authorities to prevent the gadarene rush of private investors to Potsdammerplatz and of the state to the new government centres. We need a bit of planners' nerve and politicians' leadership here.

Lower growth paths

The plan really does need to explore other demographic, economic and housing forecasts and scenarios. It may be too optimistic in the short run to hope that we could investigate better balances of growth and prosperity within the UK. The government espouses only the ultra-modest ambition of 'reducing the disparities between regional growth rates' so on this point we have to work for a change of thinking at national level. But the fact remains that our regional growth is partly at the expense of the rest of the UK (Amin, Massey and Thrift, 2003).

This may sound magnanimous, and it is probably unrealistic to expects Mayors to give growth away. But it is not self-evident that Londoners themselves are best-off with the highest growth rates.

Part of the argument for the investigation of alternative futures is that benefits would flow from lowering expectations of housing price rises, helping to stop or reverse the spiral which brings us such severe housing problems.

Diversify economy [with the LDA]

The spatial development strategy is supposed to unify in spatial terms the other strategies and its weaknesses on the narrowly-defined 'economic' front reflect weaknesses in the way the LDA works (or perhaps GLA Economics: it is sometimes hard to tell). (A bit of genetic diversity in economic analysis is always good, but part of the genome is missing.)

Specifically, the economic issues which need better treatments in the plan include the following:

(i) Alongside the focus on Finance and Business Services (FBS), the plan must explore supportive strategies for labour-intensive sectors, SMEs and minority enterprises. It must be a high priority to raise productivity and wages in the non-sexy sectors referred to above. We have millions of people working in retailing, driving, catering, utilities, social care and maintenance activities, mostly on low pay and mostly delivering services without which London's high value-added sectors would founder. I don't see anyone paying much attention to these activities or to ways in which we could plan to raise productivity and wages there. Housing and council tax benefits, tax credits as a subsidy to low-pay employers, the residue of council housing and endless supplies of migrant labour from across the world help us to avoid the issue. But it is wrong to do so and London is missing a trick by not innovating in these areas.

(ii) In spatial terms this issue links with the displacement of economic activity by over-priced housing. It also links with some awkward planning problems like the survival of retail and formerly retail space along main arteries and with planners' obsession with 'town centres'.

(iii) We surely need to explore alternative global contexts in which, for example, oil prices become radically higher, the WTO regime slows down, air travel taxes become significant, real interest rates get high or pandemics strike... The possibilities are extensive but not endless. Their importance is to focus our minds on the robustness of the economy of London and what we can do to inoculate ourselves against foreseeable crises.

Thames Gateway implementation (1)

We are clearly failing to capture rising development values to pay for infrastructure, services and continuing management and community life and this could make the Gateway project very unsatisfactory. We know that urban development produces huge financial gains in the medium and long run. Not in the short run, especially where there are infrastructure deficits, toxic soils and weak market demand to start with. In this context, Section 106 will miss the growth in market values and leave collective needs chronically under-funded. We know how to do it from British (new towns), French and Dutch experience, but we lack the nerve.

Thames Gateway implementation (2)

It also seems fairly certain that we are failing to get the urbanisation structure right for the Gateway. In particular we risk seeing the land parceled up (or already held in parcels) between the main roads so that each parcel is designed and developed as an enclave. We know from experience in Milton Keynes (Edwards 2001) and from Michael Hebbert's work (1998) that this kind of development produces nothing but trouble: dysfunctional main roads, dangerous neighbourhoods, poor shopping and services, adverse conditions for public transport and monotonous densities. The configuration principles required to ensure better development are not likely to figure in any level of plans and there is no discussion of such matters yet in the London Plan.

Planning methodology

Finally a comment on what may appear to be just a technicality but is actually of profound importance. The London Plan of 2004 is based entirely on projections of the future, i.e. on thoughtful and careful extrapolation of past trends - for population growth, employment growth by sector and so on. In this approach, each projection is a free-standing statement of expectations and there are some problems with it. Do you exclude cyclical fluctuations? How far back do you start? But most seriously the snag is that the projections are independent of each other.

Thus we cannot ask any "What if...?" questions. What happens to house prices if we vary density? How would central area employment vary with or without Crossrail 1? How much social housing would we need to keep homelessness down to a particular level? What are the positive and negative energy impacts of a more polycentric plan? These are the kinds of questions Londoners rightly ask, and which were asked by many objectors at the EIP in 2003.

To tackle such questions we need to set up a modeling approach to forecasting alongside or instead of the projections and that is what I would urge the planning team to consider. Modeling techniques have weaknesses, just as projection techniques do, but this is another area where London could innovate and make a better plan in the process. Without conditional forecasts we are prisoners of the trends.

Colleagues here in UCL have been developing another approach as well: 'backcasting' in which we first establish where we need to be in some future year (e.g. in terms of energy use) and then work backwards to see what changes we need to make, and when, to get there (Banister 2006). This too could be a useful technique, especially given the intention of the London Plan Review to re-think global warming issues fundamentally.

What if....?

What if the Plan Review does not tackle the issues summarised here? I suppose some of us, in our professional offices, our universities and elsewhere will have to attempt it ourselves. But we shall necessarily have second-best data and very little spare time so we might not do it properly. Our work could be dismissed as soft and un-quantified. If the Mayor's planning team would take this agenda on board I for one would be delighted and the plan would be a better one.

Amin, A, D Massey and N Thrift (2003) Decentering the nation: a radical approach to regional inequality London, Catalyst

Banister, D (2006) Visioning and Backcasting for UK Transport Policy VIBAT,
www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/research/planning/vibat/index.htm

Edwards, M (2001) 'City design: what went wrong at Milton Keynes?' Journal of Urban Design 6 (1): 73-82 www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/planning/information/texts

Gyourko, J, C J Mayer and T Sinai (2005) Superstar Cities Wharton School, U Penn, unpublished seminar paper , quoted with permission

Hebbert, M (1998) London: more by fortune than design Chichester, Wiley

Mayor of London (2004) The London Plan: the Spatial Development Strategy London, GLA www.london.gov.uk

Mayor of London (2005a) Draft Sub-Regional Development Framework for Central London London, GLA www.london.gov.uk

Mayor of London (2005b) Reviewing the London Plan: Statement of Intent from the Mayor London, GLA www.london.gov.uk

3. Presentation by Sir Peter Hall

Sir Peter Hall proposed a suburban Orbinet multimodal public transport system to connect Outer Metropolitan Centres. He examined the practicality of achieving an a Middle/Outer Orbital network for London based on the Paris Orbitale model and similarly combining - in South London: rail, light rail, bus and - in North London: rail, DLR, guided bus/tram. It connects with the emerging Orbirail of the adopted plan and combines heavy rail lines notably the North and East London Lines and Wimbledon and Richmond extensions using existing tracks, with local modifications, existing Croydon tram network, and extensions, and guided bus and bus routes. It connects to the proposed DLR extension. Outside Orbirail it proposes reallocation of North Circular Road road space by a tram route. [Peter: I can't believe in this bit, it would be political suicide on a major road artery and doesn't in fact connect Metropolitan Centres! Drummond] Its purpose would be to improve access to outer London centres and provide a spine for the growth of further outer London public transport improvements, given the current huge dominance of the car for a myriad of outer London trips. Other role models are the Tram/Guided Bus system known as the Caen "Twister" and the Nancy Guided Tram/Trolleybus. The scheme would be a relatively low cost option using proven technologies.

4. Presentation by Drummond Robson

First some big picture Review Questions Needing Answers ....

• Why should London contain its own growth? No previous plan has.

• How will lower employment match higher household formation and growth?

• Housing Capacity Study says nothing about Mix. What is planned?

• How can household fragmentation be matched by social cohesion and community networks?

• How is 52% of London's growth likely in the East, when the economic engines are elsewhere?

• How is new infrastructure related to patterns of growth?

• How can the £9.5bn Crossrail cost and £6.5bn Crossrail deficit be met? - if not what replaces it, or can the saving be reapplied elsewhere?

• When can we have clean fuel vehicles so that suburban London's inbuilt reliance on the car be managed? - Cars certainly won't disappear.

• Social inequalities between Central, Inner and Outer London are if anything worsening. What can be done about them?

I believe the central tenet of the London Plan in its present form fails to reconcile the different growth demands of population, housing and employment and with the associated infrastructure rquirements all within its own boundaries and offers no alternative if the strategy fails.

My second concern is that the suburbs, which provide homes for three fifths of Londoners, and provides much of London's employment is not thought important. The rest of what I have to say after this more general criticism will concentrate on the suburbs.

The third issue is that the plan and even more so the review predict disproportionat growth to the East.

Fourthly, I should add that the basis of Crossrail requires review if it is ever to be built. The current Crossrail scheme with a funding gap of £6.5 billion is an extravagance too far merely to try to copy the RER in Paris. Any savings could be spent on many worthwhile projects such as enhancing suburban communities.

Employment.

The workforce is shown to grow, based again on trend projections, remember, with ever increasing reliance on business and other services. This no doubt assumes continuing optimism about London's significance as a World City, in spite of many unknown global changes, including the rise of the vast areas of India and China.

More parochially we should remember that much of London's workforce, both men and women, lives in Outer London, but at present they depend on commuting. It will be another 6 years before the current and much needed Underground improvements are made.

In autumn 2000, 80 per cent of people working in central London travelled to work by public transport, compared with 42 per cent in the rest of Inner London, and only 18 per cent in Outer London. The 68% car users gives a clear measure of the suburban allegiance to their own transport. (The source is LRT)

Consider the distribution of the workforce. The brighter colours show where they go, with interesting centres and areas emerging also in suburban London as well as the more recognised Central Area, and Isle of Dogs in West London, Heathrow, and Croydon. Interestingly an area is emerging in Barnet. This is clearly the dawn of London the Polycentric Metropolis.

The growth of Home Internet access clearly is playing a part and should offer clues to the dispersed economic geography of London's future, as well as making less clear what work means.

Historically, accessibility has been the key - journey times to work, to shop, for leisure and to meet friends.

But there is another dimension, not much considered, and certainly unfashionable. If accessibility was that important we would all choose to live at high densities. The truth is more complex. As well as work, we also enjoy the freedoms of a home life, privacy, green space to ourselves, quiet, relaxation, time out, getting away from it, contemplation, slowing down, away from the noise and fumes.

Sophisticated computer power now invades our lives much more compellingly. I work from home. I prefer it. I meet people when I need to, not just to clock in. I get time to think as well as have discussions by email and mobile. I can send images and text in seconds and get replies minutes later. The GLAs excellent website is as near to me as anyone in City Hall. There is greater use of video conferencing and numerous other electronic gismos. I can combine more business and pleasure. See friends without the time pressures of intense urban living where the buzz is all.

It is time to diversify our city. We need the central places for the Opera and Ballet, and specialist face to face meetings some of the time, but not always, and but not for the back office, the rushed lunch or indeed the repetitive commuter journey.

The sub regional strategies prepared so far are barely worth the name if this incisive analysis of my own area is anything to go by, with its two Thameslinks and a perception that the area consists of areas for regeneration or areas to be left alone and a huge area of white unknown, which is actually changing very significantly, under many influences such as new and innovative house building and movement growth, not only by larger and larger cars, but also the complex patterns of networking, new business but weakening local social interactions, high levels of migration and house moving, sporting activity and changes in fitness regimes and healthcare and changes in education, leisure and entertainment focused more fully on the home. The planning vocabulary is being left behind by a reality with enormous pent up potential.

This London Plan is simply now a wholly inadequate way to plan our suburbs, thinking of them merely as large planning applications or irrelevant to the greater will of the Capital.

This ignores London's essence as a network of flexible, diverse and interlocking initiative takers, often individuals or very small groups, on which the success and prosperity of the Capital depends. It was in manufacturing, it is now in services.

It is in the suburbs that the corporate employee will meet and exchange ideas with the entrepreneur, whether at work, football match, pub, gym or on the golf course.

"North London has a significant number of out of centre retail parks. There should be long term plans to ensure that these locations evolve into more sustainable uses of land. In areas of good or improving public transport this could involve diversification and intensification of uses to become more balanced town centres, in less accessible locations this could involve a move to land uses that generate less trips". GLA

This quote treats retail parks as a problem, simply because they are more car dependent than traditional town centres. That does not mean they are inaccessible, even to the more disadvantaged. They express a diversity which may not conform to planners' tidiness but they too haven't gone away. Elaborating their functions yes, but not necessarily to turn them into town centres.

The Suburbs. These maps contrast public accessibility to major suburban centres in 1966, when there were 6, with the 10 identified in the 1990s. The need for more of them reflects slower journey times to give equivalent coverage.

That said it should be remembered that seen from the perspective of the shopkeepers, predominantly multiples, they are happy to locate where the customer wants them and also, as distribution networks they consider towns more interchangeably.

This suggests that the traditional view of suburbs needs to be reviewed.

Interestingly Brent Cross is not recognised, even though it fills the evident gap in the north west. Can it be because of its reliance on the car?

Surprisingly, given the actual dominance of the car in Outer London, because of the huge numbers of direct and faster trips they facilitate, I can find no recent published mapped assessment of their accessibility.

Taking an example from studies I have undertaken for a south east London Hospital Trust over many years I am convinced that accessibility by public transport can only be part of the answer. We have increased bus frequencies from 3 to 18/hour and still the network is too coarse to persuade or even force people not to use private cars. The reasons are not hard to find: convenience - door to door - reliability, flexibility, combining multiple trips and transport of shopping and schoolchildren, not to mention peripatetic hospital staff.

Also speed and area covered. This and the next slide compare bus travel times with ...

the car. The savings are obvious.

Car availability has accentuated the differences in accessibility between Inner and Outer London since 1991 when this was prepared and now.

...After all we all like using cars, don't we?

...we should just use smaller ones, running on clean fuel, combining convenience with a cleaner environment. So, for all their faults, allow them their place in the suburbs, please.

There is therefore a need to reassess the role of London's suburban town centres as part of increasing polycentric or even diffuse patterns of allegiance. I shop in Brent Cross or Barnet or the retail park depending on the goods or services I seek and the frequency I need them. The concept of a local community is no longer talking over the fence and only rarely the chance meeting in the street.

Sadly few suburban towns have a much of a distinctive identity, apart from the odd Victorian clock tower, church or war memorial. The idea that they were villages has little relevance for how they function now or their future purposes.

The rich diversity they express is more subtle and needs fuller and deeper thinking to plan them successfully for the future as places to live, work and enjoy. It is now absurd in most cases to restrict creative design on the basis of its being out of character with its poor quality surroundings.

Even Cricklewood is becoming interesting.

The suburbs offer the opportunity for diverse and imaginative designs in architectural form and use as an antidote to the repetitive rows of the past.

So I would ask for a more incisive review of the future of suburban London, rather than allow it to remain, (with its neighbours outside London), an unknown and unsung asset.

5. Presentation by Martin Simmons

Martin Simmons developed the proposition that while the GLA seemed to want a limited review of the Plan, the scale of further growth envisaged 2016-2026 requires a more fundamental overhaul of its spatial strategy . This should start from whether the growth can continue to be accommodated within London's administrative boundary, in a situation where out-migration of family households seems set to increase and there are strong drivers of economic growth in the wider region.

The Mayor expects the Plan will continue to concentrate London's global economy at the centre. However, it is good that he now recognises the need to revive the stagnant economy of much of outer London and identifies five 'development corridors', though these are not continued across the London boundary. Martin's proposition is that doing so, linking central London through outer parts of the capital to growth zones in the wider south east, presents the best opportunity to revive outer London through its centres and other development nodes, located on or linked to key rail investment corridors. As well as Thames Gateway, these include West London/Heathrow and the 'Polynet' arc further west; Wembley/Brent Cross, Watford and Luton; Stratford/Lea Valley to Stansted; Wandle/Croydon to Gatwick. Better orbital links would spread the benefits of the key growth centres.

Realisation would mean weaning the Mayor off his 'within London' mantra and require effective intra-regional coordinating mechanisms, including collaboration on joint sub-regional strategies along the growth corridors. The London Plan Review presents an opportunity to promote this, in association with the South East Plan process (Examination-in-Public at the end of 2006). The key step will be to overcome Mayoral reluctance to look beyond his boundary, to what is really 'Greater London'.

6. Presentation by Deputy Mayor Nicky Gavron (supported by officers) And Discussion

Reviewing the London Plan

Statement of Intent, Dec 2005

Nicky Gavron AM, Deputy Mayor

Meeting Comments noted in the dialogue.

Other further comments in Green

Overall Approach

• An alteration not a replacement - the plan basically robust and the vision remains unchanged. This is not accepted

• Extend Plan period ten years to 2025/26

• Review and strengthen selected policies

• Build on the experience of implementation

• Relate to South East and East of England regional plans

• Incorporate new DATA (employment, economy, transport, retail)

• Reflect new priorities e.g. the Olympics, City East, Sub Regions

• Climate Change is the big new imperative

• Nine other areas of altered and strengthened policies

Timetable

• Statement of Intent: Dec 2005

• Consultation with the Assembly and GLA family: May 2006

• Public Consultation: Sept-Nov 2006 Main "Greater Lpdf" Involvement Period

• Examination in Public: May-June 2007

• Panel Report: Sept 2007

• Review published: Early 2008

The London Plan - What's happening on the ground?
There has been:

• Continued investment in housing

• Supply and quality of office space has kept pace with demand - very low demand in outer London

• Significant in-town retail development. Patchy

• Industrial land is being actively managed Euphemism. No clear retention or release strategy

• Significant progress on key transport projects. Some, not others

What we've done recently

• Published the Alterations to the Plan (Housing, Waste, Minerals)

• Completed the Consultation on SRDF's

• Published SPG's and BPG's - more to come

• Established a London Plan Review Project Board/ Project Manager and Delivery Plan

• Assessed the Evidence Base The adequacy of this was queried .

Reviewing Key Challenges See ME Paper

• Employment projection slightly down but robust and extended to 2025 (927,000 more jobs than 2003). Not challenged head on but merely to note we are planning on the basis of past trends alone, which assumes eternal continuing growth in business and other services. No synchronisation of policy.

• Population growth: slight downward adjustment. 45,000 more people each year to 2021. No justification for this to be contained within London, admitted to by NG

• Thames Gateway critical to meet housing needs and demands. Jobs?

• Lifestyle and values: new emphasis on security

• Poverty and social exclusion remain major issues for most deprived groups

• The Environment and tackling Climate Change are the big challenges facing our generation

1. Climate Change - The big issue

• Set challenging energy efficiency targets including use of renewable energy (solar, wind, biomass, waste, water)

• Support and promote decentralised CCHP/CHP

• Mitigate flood risk by SUDS and flood resilience

• Promote water efficiency including new waste water systems

• Combat heat island effect by natural cooling, heat tolerant buildings, green infrastructure including green roofs

• Encourage development of the hydrogen economy

2. London as a World City

• Strengthen the Central Activities Zone (CAZ) as a global business district.

• Review CAZ mixed use policies to widen spectrum in west and central parts

• Strengthen the West End shopping centre Centralisation queried strongly in the Regional as opposed to International context.

• Promote visitor accommodation for 2012 and an International Convention Centre

• Highest priority to an efficient transport system

• Foster flagships e.g. cultural, academic and medical

• Improve the public realm in CAZ

3. The London Economy

• Ensure capacity for new office space

• Clear framework to manage the change of use of spare industrial space (e.g. housing and waste processing). Lesser targets.

• Identify retail needs and promote night-time economy

• Promote the green sector industries

• Strengthen support for SMEs owned and operated by minorities

4. Housing

• Include new housing and affordable housing targets. Challenged principles.

The complexity of affordable housing agreements and unjustified demands results in supply delays for both market and affordable housing

• Ensure larger households have access to appropriate housing

• Introduce standards for internal and external space

• Improve planning for related infrastructure e.g. transport, schools, play and recreation space

• Improve safety and security in housing developments and public realm

• Housing schemes to be energy and resource efficient, use at least 10% renewable energy and include CCHP/CHP schemes Acknowledgement of incineration.

• Too much emphasis on the additional supply, not on the vastly greater current stock.

5. Tackling Social Exclusion

• Enhance education capacity and childcare provision

• Link communities to job opportunities in central London, opportunity areas and local centres

• Provide strong direction for boroughs to tackle areas of deprivation

• Ensure 2012 Olympic legacy benefits all London. How?

6. Transport See Paper by PH

• Integrate transport and environmental priorities, cut CO2 and other pollutants, improve public realm and gateways

• Promote modal shift from cap to public transport, walking and cycling

• Improve access to support London's economy

• Complete Crossrail In your dreams!

• Deliver improved transport for the Olympics and legacy

• Complete Orbirail Supported. Timetable?

• Develop London's area airports Importance of Luton

• Integrate transport with new housing and employment opportunities. Good aspiration. Not evident how.

• Strengthen public transport, rail, tube, tram, bus transit. Acknowledge the car

7. London's Geography See Paper by MS

• Review sub-regional boundaries for more effective partnerships

• Include key messages from SRDFs e.g. opportunity areas and town centres

• Sustainable and robust approach to housing in the city region

• Improve inter-regional co-ordination on transport investment

• Reduce London's environmental footprint e.g. waste

• How to handle distribution of goods

8. London's Suburbs. See Papers by PH, DR

• Identify needs and aspirations of outer London residents and businesses

• More sustainable development to improve economic base and quality of life

• Promote sustainable suburbs e.g. energy, water, waste and transport

• Review the town centre network and unique character of centres

• Increase higher density housing in town centres

• Improve public transport to and between suburban centres

9. Liveability

• Promote safety through design

• Improve spatial implications of safety on the transport

• Promote design excellence and strong local identities in town centres

• Incorporate green infrastructure into developments to develop the open space network

• Support the green grid and green arc concepts

10. Olympic and Paralympic Games

• Provide guidance to ensure the long-term legacy as a showcase for sustainable design and construction. How to overcome conflicts between the 16 day needs of the Games and the enduring needs of the legacy?

• Facilitate delivery of major transport improvements

• Publish Area Action Plan for the Lower Lea

• Promote quality design, safety and security and inclusivity

• Integrate sporting and health benefits in relevant plans

• Ensure legacy increases access to facilities and economic opportunities for deprived areas and communities

Other related work

• TfL Transport 2025 and Transport Strategy (complementary review process)

• LDA Economic Development Strategy and Review of Regeneration/Opportunity Areas

• Alterations to existing plan - public consultation and EiP)

• Review of Mayoral Powers

• EERA/SEERA - EiP See MS paper

Research being commissioned includes...

• Sub-Region boundaries

• Update of Housing Requirements Study

• Housing: Implementation of the density matrix and discussion of possible space standards.

• East London Employment Land Study

• Review of Wholesale Markets

• Climate Change: Urban Heat Island

• Standards for play and informal recreation

Conclusions and next steps

• Challenging but deliverable timetable

• Statement of Intent Paper was published at the end of December

• Comments welcome by 1 March 2006.