In response to London’s travails, the argument is often made that the city has a particular resilience and ability to remake itself. It may feel beset on all sides at present, but is its next renewal already underway?
A couple of years ago, Professor Tony Travers in a Strand Group lecture highlighted events in the capital’s history from which recovery was by no means certain: the Great Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire the following year; the Blitz of 1940-41 and the wider impact of Word War II.
He noted that the war was followed by three decades or more of decline. Manufacturing contracted and the world’s largest docks headed towards dereliction. In 1939, London’s population stood at 8.6 million. By 1985, it had fallen to 6.6 million. In 1986, city-wide government disappeared with the abolition of the Greater London Council. The direction of travel, it seemed to Travers, was “simply a road heading downwards to oblivion”.
But then, the opposite happened: population growth; Docklands towering upwards; the City of London reversing its anti-development stance; the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) and the Jubilee Line extension opening up inner east London; the capital’s first directly-elected Mayor. There followed the regeneration of Kings Cross, Battersea and Stratford and, four years ago, the opening of the Elizabeth line, already the most heavily used railway in the country.
The impetus for all this remains unclear. Most likely, it stemmed from a combination of impacts, including deregulation and the “Big Bang” liberation of the City, significant public investment, the galvanising effects of the Millennium and then the Olympics, and new mayoral powers over planning and transport. But whatever the causes, the capital was again reviving.
Today, things are again not looking so good. The global financial crisis, Brexit and its aftermath, the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine have all undermined the city’s strengths. So have “levelling up” policies, high poverty rates and a decade of austerity. The housing crisis continues, while the voices of those who talk the city down keep growing louder.
Can London repeat its reinvention trick? Travers listed some of the policy changes he thought would help get London back on track: more devolution to City Hall and the boroughs, including revenue-raising powers through control over property taxes and a tourist levy; boosting investment in housing and transport, including buses; “cleaner and safer” neighbourhood initiatives; a more coordinated approach to the governance of central London.
Since then, some of those things have happened. We’ve seen more government cash for affordable housing and for transport in the form of supporting replacements for ageing Underground fleets and backing for the DLR extension to Thamesmead, which will prepare the ground for thousands of homes to be built on both sides of the river.
The Mayor is expanding the Superloop bus service as part of a new plan for improving street transport. There is emergency action to kickstart private housing development, and a tourist tax on its way.
The very shape of the city is changing too, with new planning policies for bringing denser development to the suburbs, two London New Towns and even some limited Green Belt release.
While the previous government blocked development at Cockfosters station car park with what was seen as an extreme example of Whitehall intervention, the current one reversed the ban, and a much-needed 373-home scheme is now going ahead. A similar scheme at High Barnet station is set to follow.
The London terminus of HS2, left in doubt by the previous government, will now be at Euston, demand for “grade A” office space in the capital’s commercial centre is increasing (and being met perhaps as much in refurbished stock as in soaring new-builds), Canary Wharf is back post-Covid, and the Elizabeth line is attracting investment across its route. And perhaps the highest profile indicator of confidence in London’s renewal, the Oxford Street pedestrianisation scheme, is now going ahead at pace.
There’s more to do, of course, notably on fiscal devolution – London still retains only seven per cent of the tax it generates compared to New York’s 50 per cent – on the “cleaner and safer” agenda, and on the continuing financial pressures on London’s local authorities, nine of which would be unable to balance their budgets this year without additional government help.
There’s also the broader and perhaps perennial question, of how, in Travers’s words, to “advance the city sensitively, allowing continued economic dynamism allied to improving social outcomes for citizens”.
No room for complacency then. As Rob Anderson from the Centre for London think tank put it this week, the capital’s economic success, so vital for the UK as a whole, is not guaranteed. London’s streets are not “paved with gold”, and the government “needs to recognise this complex reality”.
It’s right that the combined forces of the city continue to make its case. But despite the doomsters, the signs are positive. Time, perhaps, for a little more optimism too.
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