Want to grow London, make it bigger

With a pressing need for additional housing in the Capital, the main focus of attention has been increasing the density of the city often through many taller residential buildings. However, the actual densities that London may need in new developments or indeed that people want to pay to live in may mean that a different long term approach is required.  Throw in the need for never ending new ways of increasing local government efficiency as well as London’s potential to grow by a city the size of Birmingham and there is a case to think more radically and long term.

A missing part of the debate is about expanding London. And what I mean here is physically pushing the boundaries of London out. Of course, over history the formal and informal edge of London has changed over time and indeed the implementation of Green Belts was a reasonable response to growing concerns about urban sprawl. However we are now stuck at a bit of an impasse with, on the one hand, an explicit political avoidance of tinkering with Green Belt in a strategic way while, on the other, allowing increasing numbers of homes to be consented for construction there anyway.  I'm not sure this gradual erosion is going to end well even if it does kick the political can down the road.

But what if London was bigger? The boundary of London has moved about every 60-70 years.  The London County Council was created in 1889, a case made for an expanded LCC (adding Windsor, Eton and Slough) rejected by the Ullswater Commission in 1923 and the Greater London that we know today was created in 1965.  Over the last 20 years consideration has been given to aligning the boundary to the M25 (2004), allowing Dartford, Thurrock and Watford to vote on inclusion via a local referendum (2005) and adding Elmbridge (2010).

And what are the benefits? A few to consider: control over the continuous urban area would allow the extension and integration of London’s transport, police, health and other services where scale economies may be possible; the potential to create larger administrative units able to deal with the next 50 years of London’s growth more polycentrically; easier management of growth at London’s boundaries; the potential for a greater concentration of growth along transit corridors and a new way of looking at the Green Belt as more functional wedges in a wider area.

However, the main hurdle is that London would be swallowing up the very same people who decided that they wanted to live just outside London but not in it.