Throughout history, great cities have been made by great rivers: the Nile (Cairo), Tigris (Baghdad), Tiber (Rome), Seine (Paris), Hudson (New York), and the Thames (London). Water was the best means of transportation before roads and cars came along. As waterways go, rivers are a more efficient use of space than coasts; with two banks instead of one shoreline, there’s more space to cluster buildings around the water. But now we’re less reliant on boats, even rivers aren’t as useful. They may even be an overall negative, as they take up valuable space.

But the Thames and London are inseparable – it is part of the city’s landscape and provides a beautiful setting for many neighbourhoods along its banks. We just need the right infrastructure to make it work, and the Thames has many bridges which connect London’s boroughs together.

Bridges are essential to London life. We probably need more, but there’s no point building new ones if we can’t even use the existing ones.

Seven years after Hammersmith Bridge was first closed to traffic it still isn’t open?

The bridge first closed to Londoners in 2019 after engineers assessed that structural damage meant it could collapse. Nick Maini has an excellent long read on the problems with the bridge which explains in more detail how we got here, and what we can do about it.

In short: small fractures in the structure were widening, creating cracks, which risked the bridge’s cast-iron structure shattering suddenly. The safety risks were very real. Stabilisation efforts secured the structure for pedestrians and cyclists, but not normal traffic, and it has cost £48 million to date.

Since then, 9,000 car journeys which happened across the bridge every day have disappeared – they haven’t been replaced. Most of the other journeys shifted to cycling, walking, driving around over Chiswick Bridge or Putney Bridge, or using forms of public transport which don’t rely on the bridge (like buses do). But these 9,000 trips aren’t happening at all. Residents have had to choose to stay put, to not take a new job which would involve a tricky commute, and to ration their travel across West London.

Locals, both residents and businesses, overwhelmingly want the bridge to reopen. So what is happening? For nearly seven years, nothing.

The council asked the Department for Transport to fully restore the bridge in 2023, using a business case based around a Foster & Partners design with a £250 million price tag, and a 10 year construction time. Other designs have been proposed since 2023, but none have caught on since they don’t solve the fundamental problem of cost.

Other ideas have attempted to get around this without starting a big infrastructure project. Licensing rickshaws to cross the bridge, an impractical vehicle toll, and turning the bridge into a monument have all been mooted, but these are all still a retreat, back to a world with fewer options for residents. The scheme’s critics point out how people have adjusted their behaviour, and returning the bridge to operation might be something they want, but not something they need. It’s popular in planning circles to criticise the ‘induced demand’ from new infrastructure, but ultimately it is a good thing. As Ben Southwood has pointed out:

“...If roads exist, people plan their lives around them and use them more. But they do this with every technology. This is just how demand works – it’s not a special type of ‘induced’ demand.

So induced demand is not a helpful concept. We use roads because we want to get around, which we want whether or not roads exist. The upshot is that road infrastructure is good.”

Bridges are no different.

In 2021 the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, Transport for London and the Department for Transport each agreed to fund one third of the restoration. But since then the three parties haven’t been able to get together, agree a plan, and come up with their share of the costs.

Maybe a fourth party could break the deadlock? Last year John Murphy wrote about the history of the City Bridge Foundation (CBF), a charity set up in 1282 to maintain London Bridge, which then began tolling and maintaining other bridges across London. Since 1995, its purpose has changed; now it funds social justice causes. In 2023, it planned to make grants of £30 million, and planned an additional £200 million over the next three years.

CBF has a Board that oversees day to day responsibilities, but the City of London Corporation is the ultimate trustee of the Foundation. Hammersmith might be outside the City’s boundaries, but so too are many of the charitable projects it funds.

Whoever pays, and how, the bridge needs to be fixed. With modern technology, a full rebuild to match the original architecture (but with stronger materials) might be preferable to a workaround which preserves the Grade II listing (which was only granted in 2008). The legacy of the bridge’s Victorian builders shouldn’t be that we maintain it at all cost – they would no doubt be horrified at the cost and time overruns involved in replacing their creation. The spirit of their age should inspire us to build like they did.

Londoners have been building bridges across the Thames since the Romans did in the first century AD, all the way up to the Millennium Bridge in 2000. Forget building another one: if we can’t repair Hammersmith Bridge, not only will West London be divided in two for traffic and public transport, but will be a symbol that we’ve given up on building the most basic infrastructure a city needs.

The campaign group Looking for Growth (LFG) is calling for the Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander to break the institutional stalemate and rebuild the bridge; first with a temporary road bridge, then a permanent one. You can and should sign their open letter here.

Community notes:

• What we’ve been reading

  • Urban expansion in the age of liberalism by Samuel Hughes

  • Inventing fun by Alys Key

• Support Shoreditch Works!

  • If the government is serious about growth it should approve Shoreditch Works by Nicholas Boys Smith

  • Please support the campaign to get Shoreditch Works built. You can write to them at planning [at] hackney [dot] gov [dot] uk quoting ‘Shoreditch Works application 2024/2201’ in the subject line with your comments.

  • Or, turn out in person to support the proposal. Hackney’s planning sub-committee meeting is at 18:30 on Wednesday, 4th February, at the Council Chamber, Hackney Town Hall. You can just turn up.

  • The details of the planning application are here.

Modern drones are quiet and safe, and are piloted in cities the world over for both business and pleasure. But it’s hard to find places to fly in London, and it shouldn’t be.

You have just bought one of the most popular drone models ever made, the DJI Mini 4 Pro. It weighs less than 250g and is the length of a smartphone. The national aviation regulator allows you to fly it as high as the smoke stacks of Battersea Power Station or just below the height of the tallest pod on the London Eye , and as far away as you can see it. It comes packed with sensors that massively reduce the possibility pilot error could cause a crash. It can even autonomously return to where it took off and land by itself. Naturally, your first question, apart from perhaps how to fly it, is where you can fly it. With a modern drone in London, that’s the harder one to answer.

To understand where you can fly you need to understand that the airspace that the drone flies through is governed separately from where you stand to launch, control, and land the drone. This is why Easyjet doesn't need your permission to fly over your house. But the land is controlled by the landowner, which is why you can refuse Easyjet permission to land in your garden. A landowner can stop what happens on their ground but not what happens in the sky.

That privilege belongs to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) which manages UK airspace. The CAA goes to great lengths to consult with drone hobbyists and commercial drone users. Not everyone agrees with their decisions and changes, but they recognise the right of drone users to make use of the airspace and their contribution to society and the economy.

Drones are used by estate agents who fly through houses to give prospective buyers a greater sense of the property. Roofers can check what work is required without having to erect scaffolding. Mobile telecoms engineers can avoid the faff of blocking the road with a cherry-picker to inspect phone masts. And journalists can give readers and viewers with a new perspective on the city. The CAA acknowledges the industry represents a “healthy, fast-paced, highly-innovative” area. But many of London’s boroughs seem unconvinced.

Because to get your drone in the air you are going to have to take off from somewhere (and ideally land somewhere as well). But some of London’s local authorities have passed byelaws that prevent the flying of drones. It depends on the borough you are in, your definition of a drone, and what kind of land you want to take off from.

Take Croydon which, like Islington and Camden, has no restrictions on flying drones of any kind from any of its land. This means you just need to follow the CAA’s airspace rules, and can take off and land where you like. With the Mini 4 Pro, which is about the shape and half the weight of a medium-sized sweet potato, you can legally fly in the street, or in a park, close to buildings, or close to people.

But I have to travel to Croydon to fly my drone because where I live in Southwark flying a drone from a park is a violation of a byelaw they copied and pasted from a list of central government suggestions. These restrictions seem to have appeared in Southwark’s Parks and Open Spaces byelaws sometime around 2007. That is the year the first police drone was launched, described at the time as being derived from a military prototype that ‘only’ took 3 minutes to launch, was ‘only’ a metre wide, and was described variously in the press as an ‘unmanned helicopter’ and a ‘plane.’ More a large pumpkin than a sweet potato.

The byelaws used by boroughs to restrict the use of drones (often described as ‘model aircraft’ in the legislation) were not intended to regulate what a modern drone is. 2025’s consumer camera drones are very different to petrol-engine model aircraft. They are quieter, smaller, and safer than anything that existed at the time they were written. And now there is plenty of nationally consistent regulation controlling their use designed by qualified legal and aviation experts at the CAA.

Brent Council has taken regulation to the extreme. It prevents drones flying from all its parks and open spaces like many boroughs, but also take-off from land surrounding Wembley Park up to a kilometre away without prior written permission. Remember, the CAA can (and does) restrict flying during music and sports events around the stadium. But even if you want to land or take-off from your own garden within this radius when the stadium is empty, you need to run that by Brent Council first.

This is enforced through a Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) – an instrument designed to prevent anti-social behaviour that is “detrimental to the local community’s quality of life.” But asked with what evidence they relied on to determine whether they need a PSPO, Brent replied, “we do not have a number of incidences [sic.] recorded; but we have witnessed a number of people choosing to fly drones when it is perhaps too windy; in areas where there are high numbers of parks users.” They also noted in their reply that drone flights “can have really severe consequences for the safety of air passengers,” which is no doubt correct but is the CAA’s problem, not Brent Council’s.

Local authorities do not have the right expertise to regulate drone flight, and why should they? Let's leave the regulation to the national airspace regulator and if drone flights do become a problem in their parks or streets, council officers can use existing antisocial behaviour powers to fine inconsiderate drone users or call the police who can use their aviation powers to halt illegal flying.

If councils find there is a consistent problem with the use of drones in their public spaces, that genuinely meets the threshold of anti-social behaviour, they can still reimpose anti-drone byelaws. But this time with the appropriate evidence base to back them up, not hunches which date from nearly two decades ago. In the meantime London’s residents and businesses should be able to use this safer, useful, evolving, and exciting technology.

London’s economy today is built on services. The City of London is still a global financial centre, and the capital is a huge exporter of British law and legal services, hosts internationally competitive creative industries, and remains Europe’s leading tech hub.

One thing we don’t associate with London is manufacturing – despite a long history of making things in the city. From the 18th to the mid 20th centuries, London was an industrial hub, competing with Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield and Liverpool for workers and factory space. But along with the rest of the country, since the Second World War London’s manufacturing sector has shrunk.

Could that ever change? Isembard, a new start up based in Park Royal, is betting big that it will. Isembard raised £7 million in seed funding to build a software-first manufacturing business, aiming to automate large parts of the industrial supply chain and usher in a new era of advanced manufacturing businesses - not just in the UK, but in the West as a whole.

Isembard’s Founder and CEO Alexander Fitzgerald showed me around their first site in Park Royal, West London, and we talked about what they’re up to.

J: Isembard Kingdom Brunel has a big legacy. What are you hoping people will take from naming your company after him?

A: Reclaiming a lost sense of purpose as a nation and society. To me, the most important thing in a business is not the product, the business model or the technology. It is the mission. That is the foundation on which everything else stands. It's how you recruit your first team members, and it’s through them that everything else flows.

The Isembard mission speaks for itself. Production lies at the route of everything. It's how we as humanity have sharped the Earth, and eventually how we’ll shape the stars. We need to get better at accelerating the scale of production in the most critical industries. And Isembard will do just that.

J: Is there a future for British manufacturing today? Many people think its fortunes are bleak?

A: Those people are wrong. We have all the fundamentals to be successful at manufacturing here in the UK. A huge head start in critical industries such as defence and aerospace. A globally competitive software engineering market. Great universities. Formula 1. The materials are all there. Now we just need to process them in the right way, and Isembard is how we want to bring those together.

I see us as building the AWS (Amazon Web Services) of critical industry manufacturing. In the old world, before AWS, companies used to have to run their own servers. That was incredibly inefficient. Centralising compute capacity in datacentres, allowing customers to draw down on what they need when they need it, has revolutionised software. Manufacturing today is in that same state - it’s decentralised, a sector made up of lots and lots of small machine shops. It makes sense to centralise manufacturing capacity. That is what we are building across the country. Factories which can be used directly by customers, with automated pipelines to get the products they need.

J: Manufacturing isn’t a sector that start up founders and venture investors have traditionally wanted to work in. We’re seeing a pivot to ‘deep tech’ and hardware based companies now, what is driving that?

A: There is no defensibility anymore in software-only business models. The ‘moats’ people used to rely on to defend their business models from competitors are all drying up now that AI can develop software and solve knowledge problems for start ups. Plus, you can only solve most real problems in the world with a combination of hardware and software. The world has enough carbon accounting software businesses. We need to focus on actually producing green electrons in the real world.

J: Lots of the challenges with the manufacturing sector are due to an ageing workforce which we’re struggling to replace. Is that solvable by a start up?

A: Yes. The problem is largely due to three things. Ambition, talent and success. For ambitious people you need ambitious companies to join. But companies targeting an increase in earrings per share of 20 basis points a quarter is not ambitious, or worthwhile calling for the best and the brightest. Colonising the moon is. Second, the greatest talent moves to the greatest problems and finds other talent to work with. There is a change going on. The most talented people are choosing quests with more worthwhile aims than their predecessors did. And finally, success. There’s no point being ambitious without actually achieving anything.

J: Most people associate manufacturing, including advanced manufacturing, with economies in the north or west of England. Why base yourselves in London?

A: Access to software talent, customers and investors. London is still the best place in the UK for all three. Our HQ is in London but we’re expanding across the UK and internationally.

J: We have had writers for the Greater London Project suggest developing more of the Park Royal area (where Isembard is based) into housing, rather than manufacturing. The area commands much lower property prices because the Strategic Industrial Land designation stops it being developed. Is it good that we restrict big areas of London for manufacturing only, when there’s much more demand for other uses?

A: Yes. There’s no point building houses if everyone is commuting to a desk job that will be automated in the next few months. AI is going to undercut lots of the service economy that London is based on, so its mix of businesses and jobs needs to shift. People used to think that robots were coming for all the manufacturing jobs, not services, so you should learn how to do a desk job. They’re wrong, the change is happening the other way around.

ChatGPT is coming for you if all that you do is push pixels around a screen. You want to be out working in the real world.

J: You are one of the organisers of the London Defence Hackathon, which has now run two years in a row. And you’re an Army reservist as well as a startup founder. Historically, some people in tech have been uncomfortable working with defence, and many people in defence have found it hard to work effectively with startups. What’s changed?

A: Each of us has a debt to society which we must repay. We repay it in the form of good manners, working hard and doing the right thing. My mum immigrated to the UK, my dad was a factory worker's son and became a successful lawyer, and a country where that can happen is only possible because “rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf”.

What's changed? Ukraine. I think it was easier for British people to detach from war when it’s fought between people who aren’t European, and it just felt like something which happened to other people. Ukraine obviously changed that.

Q: Like me, you were a civil servant in the Treasury in a previous life. Do policymakers have the right approach to start-ups and the renaissance of interest in manufacturing? If you could ask them for one thing, what would it be?

A: No, unfortunately they don’t yet, but they are getting there!

We need more financing support for small to medium sized businesses in purchasing/renting machine tools. Machine tools (costing anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions) are the atomic unit of manufacturing progress. Lowering the cost and speed of access to this tooling will help advanced manufacturing businesses blossom in Britain, until we’re a colossus of industry again.

J: In twenty years time, what do you think the future holds for London, and Britain? What’s the best version of that, and how do we get there?

A: We are in the top three to four countries as a share of global GDP. Manufacturing has risen as a share of our GDP. London has become the world’s centre of AI . Britain has more successful startups per capita than any country in the world.

We need to pick winners, demolish barriers, cut non-security-related state spending, and get out of the way of progress and growth.

If you're an industrialist or a policymaker who wants to visit a modern software-first factory, get in touch with Alexander [dot] Fitzgerald [at] Isembard [dot] com.

—

Community notes:

• What we’ve been reading:

  • Jim Waterson for London Centric on ‘Asif Aziz: The billionaire and the tax evading gift shops’

  • Sean Eke for Re:State on ‘London and New York City: Governing ungovernable cities’

  • Michael Dnes on ‘What really ate Ebbsfleet’ (threaded here)

  • Benedict Springbett’s explainer of judicial review.

  • Simon French in The Times on Abundance economics for the UK.

  • And these amazing old photos of the demolition and rebuilding of the Bank of England.

• What we’ve been listening to: ‘The Underrated Economics of Land with Mike Bird’, on the Works in Progress podcast.

• Fun fact: did you know that Robert Moses built 650 playgrounds in New York City? More detail here.

• Jobs:

  • The Greater London Authority are hiring for two Assistant Development Managers.

  • The City of London Corporation are hiring for a City Business and Investment Director.

  • Impact on Urban Health are hiring for a Director of Policy, Influencing and Change.

• And thank you to everyone who came to our first Lightning Talks event last month, kindly hosted by the RSA! We had a great turnout to hear twelve speakers give five minute talks on anything they wanted to do with London.

There is no consensus on how Soho got its name, but it has given it to many other districts across the world – there are Sohos (with varied spellings) as far afield as New York, Buenos Aires, Shanghai and Beijing. What started as a hunting ground gave way to farmland, then housing for the landed gentry, and began to resemble the modern-day entertainment district from the end of the 19th Century onwards.

Londoners and visitors from around the world value the area for its theatres, clubs, drinking and dining, and numerous entertainment and media businesses. But despite its central location and ease of access from across London, Soho is struggling.

During the pandemic, Westminster City Council allowed the area to be pedestrianised. They relaxed licensing rules and blocked off through-traffic so that cafes, bars and restaurants could let people dine ‘al fresco’ on tables lining the pavements. The scheme let businesses operate more than 16,000 additional ‘covers’ (sittings) across Westminster, supporting some 80,000 jobs in hospitality and saving countless businesses in Soho from going bust.

Since these measures were rolled back in 2021, businesses have been calling for them to be restored and made permanent. The Soho Business Alliance wrote to the Mayor asking for a pedestrianised Soho to be included in plans alongside the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street announced in September, in a move Westminster Council quickly condemned. The Mayor’s team have indicated that they don’t support the plan either, presumably because he would effectively be overruling the local Labour council, and it didn’t appear in their consultation on Oxford Street earlier this year.

But pedestrianising Soho is the right thing to do. London is an outlier in European cities when it comes to the lack of pedestrianised zones. Barcelona’s La Rambla, the rue des Rosiers in Paris, much of Madrid, and 50 hectares of Ghent in Belgium show us what designing urban areas around pedestrians, not vehicles, can do.

Streets clogged by cars, vans and motorbikes can be repurposed for pedestrians, tables and chairs for outdoor dining, and even smaller marketplaces. In enclosed and narrow spaces, the pollution from road traffic is terrible, hemmed in by tall buildings which have worse ventilation than open spaces or nearby parks. And London has something many of those cities lack – an excellent underground tube network running beneath its pavements, taking the pressure off of street-level public transport anyway.

The trouble is, until now Soho’s residents have so far been given an effective veto, and the vocal ones oppose the scheme. For some, it’s about wanting vehicle access. But for others, they just don’t see it as a good deal – trading the noise and pollution from occasional vehicles for the lack of access to their own cars, the noise of even more crowds and the litter that comes with them. Plenty will see it as a cost with no upside: homeowners can’t necessarily expect a bump in property value from a busier neighbourhood, and social housing residents wouldn’t share that incentive anyway. As with any city, the trade-off is between what local residents want, and the desires of everyone else.

Really, businesses in Soho shouldn’t have to appeal to a higher authority to try and get pedestrianisation. It should be in Westminster City Council’s interests to help grow local businesses, growing the revenues they can get from business rates in the long-run. But despite Westminster City Council being the biggest collector of business rate revenue in England, 96 per cent of that revenue is redistributed elsewhere. It goes to central government and other parts of the country, or the Mayor and other parts of London. And based on the Government’s proposals, even more of it is set to be redistributed in the future.

Although much of that funding still goes to services which the residents of Soho also need, such as Transport for London or the Metropolitan Police, it means the Council have negligible incentive to increase business rates revenue. It also gives the Council less room to ‘buy out’ local opposition with the proceeds of a richer and more prosperous Soho. More and more late opening licensing applications are being denied, yet more evidence that the Council isn’t incentivised to care about businesses being successful.

Fixing the incentives for London’s governments to care about business growth is a bigger problem. In the meantime, the centre of London isn’t just for residents, it’s also for everyone else. But at the moment, the rest don’t get a say about Soho’s future, and the system is set up to empower only a small but noisy group of local blockers. The Mayor can and should change that.

London’s history is littered with examples of where local NIMBYs held back progress. Before it had such reliable tube networks the trolleybus and trams were even more important for London’s commuters. But for years the West End and the City of London refused to have the routes run through the centre, only up to it from suburban areas, to cut down on noise and disruption. Imagine how much less convenient that would be if you were trying to cut through central London on public transport. Eventually they relented, a victory for the whole of London over the interests of specific central areas.

Trolleybus and tram routes, 1947

The Mayor should change his position and back the Soho Business Alliance, by including plans to pedestrianise Soho along with Oxford Street in the remit of the new Mayoral Development Corporation.

Soho has that magic about it, the magic that reminds us London is more than a collection of small towns around political and financial districts. It’s the world’s greatest capital city. Soho deserves better than being a cut-through for tour buses or taxis scouting for late night fares. It should be the place where people want to go – not one to just pass through.

Behind the towering foliage and creaking iron gates of private garden squares lie some of London’s finest views. To many Londoners the gardens are just a marker on a journey, travelled by rather than being destinations in their own right. But scattered across the city, the hundreds of private garden squares tell a story of innovation and creativity which deserves to be shared.

Usually only accessible to select residents' associations, most gardens will be open to the public on 7 & 8 June, during the London Open Gardens weekend. More than a glimpse over the railings, the weekend is a rare opportunity for anyone seeking new perspectives on everyday sights. Within the garden squares, visitors can get a new perspective on otherwise familiar buildings.

Take Bedford Square – the only complete Georgian square remaining in Bloomsbury. Visitors to the square can fully appreciate Thomas Leverton’s innovative square design, where he transplanted Georgian country house facades onto each of the square’s four ‘wings’. Each side emulates the appearance of a stately home, with a central structure consisting of a pediment and pilasters marked out in white stucco, standing in direct contrast to the bricked houses on either side. The simple design is repeated around the square, creating a sense of order and harmony.

Over time, residents and architects of Bedford Square have inserted individuality into an otherwise coherent design through the addition of railings, rusticated arches, coloured doorways and terraced balconies. The square’s original layout has developed since its original arrangement, with the shrubbery and serpentine paths having been modified to privilege open space and a central hexagonal pavilion feature.

Architects and landscapers often designed the gardens with the aim of creating pockets of exploration and delight amongst some of the city’s densest streets. Thomas Cubbit laid out Warwick Square, situated just south of Victoria, in the mid-19th century. The square is an example of how the picturesque movement – with a focus on intentionally curated views and visual variety – gradually disseminated from country houses and altered the city’s urban fabric in this period.

Warwick Square garden features an impressive variety of features and plants, with a rose garden, formal bedding and lawn area, and a mix of shrubs, herbaceous plants and seasonal ephemerals. The garden also holds plane, lime, sycamore and alianthus trees. Describing the square in 2022, the Open Gardens judges awarded Warwick Square the Best Small Park Award and called it “a gardener’s delight – a structured hotchpotch from the everyday to the unusual and exotic.”

Earl’s Court Square demonstrates how London’s history has shaped its green spaces. In World War II a bomb hit the square and caused considerable damage to both the buildings and the garden. The space was not prioritised in the subsequent repair efforts across the city, and remained unusable as a green space throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

However, using powers in the Kensington Improvement Act 1851, which authorised residents to manage their garden maintenance, the Earls’ Court Residents’ Association took over the garden square in the 1970s. The committee have since managed the space, and visitors to the square over the open garden weekend will be able to experience its improvements, including new steel railings, an irrigation system, flood lighting, and circular seating around the central plane tree.

London’s private garden squares trace the city’s architectural evolution, from the early development of Bloomsbury’s squares to the communal efforts taken to restore gardens in the 20th century. They tell a story of innovation, often transplanting design and landscaping trends from elsewhere in the country into the city’s urban fabric, fundamentally reshaping the streets and districts residents call home. So, for those seeking a fresh perspective on everyday sights, take a chance to tour the garden squares and celebrate London’s creative and communal approach to architecture and landscape design.

More details of London Open Gardens 2025 can be found here, with a full list of participating gardens here.

Community notes:

• If you enjoyed this post about garden squares, you might like Samuel Hughes’ article about the history of unified ownership and larger developments.

• Greater Londoners will also enjoy this good blog on the next London Plan.

• The GLA is appointing four independent members of the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation, find out more and apply. Similarly, Brent Council is appointing two independent members to its housing development companies, more info here.

• Thank you to everyone who turned out for our last drinks at Mother Kelly’s. If you aren’t subscribed to our events calendar you can join it here - more coming soon!

Hope you have a great weekend!

Joe Hill, on behalf of the Greater London Project.

Sewage management is one of civilisation’s greatest achievements. A defining chapter in the history of sanitation unfolded in Victorian Britain, particularly in London, where a pioneering sewage system was built. That system transformed the city’s sanitary conditions and has remained an essential part of London’s infrastructure ever since.

By preventing disease outbreaks and protecting clean water supplies, effective sewage systems have allowed dense populations to develop along with modern cities. A vast network of infrastructure that operates largely unseen beneath streets and within pumping stations or treatment facilities has transformed cities from the disease-ridden environments of the past into the clean, liveable spaces we enjoy today.

Cesspools, night soil men & cholera

For most of its history, London relied on cesspools for sewage management, which were underground pits that collected and stored sewage from buildings. Cesspools were emptied by “night soil men” (also known as “gong farmers”) who sold the contents as fertiliser for agricultural use outside the city. This system remained the primary disposal method until London’s rapid urban expansion in the 19th century undermined its efficacy. The city’s population doubled from 1 million to 2 million between 1801 and 1851, then nearly tripled to 5.6 million by 1891. Cesspools frequently overflowed as housing density increased and many houses began to be connected to street sewers that were originally designed only for rainwater. These sewers emptied directly into the Thames, turning London’s main water source into an open sewer. The introduction of water closets (flush toilets) worsened the situation by dramatically increasing household wastewater volume, creating serious public health risks.

In 1854, Dr. John Snow and Rev. Henry Whitehead tracked down the source of a cholera outbreak in Soho to a contaminated water pump on Broad Street, disproving the prevailing “miasma theory” (that disease spread through foul air) and establishing the connection between contaminated water and disease transmission.

Sir Joseph Bazalgette

Following several more cholera outbreaks and the "Great Stink of 1858", a summer during which the stench from the polluted Thames became so unbearable that Parliament considered relocating to Henley, the government commissioned the Metropolitan Board of Works, led by Sir Joseph Bazalgette, to deliver a new sewage system.

Bazalgette’s sewage system transformed the city’s sanitary conditions and delivered critical infrastructure that has protected public health for over 150 years. Bazalgette’s system consisted of over 1,100 miles of street sewers, 82 miles of main interceptor sewers, 318 million bricks, and four major pumping stations to divert sewage eastward away from central London. This vast infrastructure project not only improved public health dramatically but also reshaped London through the creation of the Victoria, Albert and Chelsea Embankments, for which 52 acres of land were reclaimed from the river.

The London plans were heavily informed by the pioneering work of James Newlands, who had designed a sewage system in Liverpool during the late 1840s which had dramatically improved public health outcomes.

Cathedrals for Sewage

Bazalgette's pumping stations at Abbey Mills and Crossness are perhaps the most remarkable features of the entire London sewage system. Designed by the architect Charles Driver to include magnificent Gothic Revival features, Romanesque brickwork, campanile/minaret style chimneys, and ornate decorative ironwork, their grandeur is a testament to the magnitude of Victorian civic ambition. These pumping stations, far from being purely utilitarian facilities for sewage management, were conceived as architectural masterpieces that came to be known colloquially as the “Cathedrals on the Marshes”.

Bazalgette’s combined sewage system

The system Bazalgette designed is a combined sewage system, meaning that clean rainwater and sewage wastewater (from toilets, bathrooms and kitchens) are conveyed in the same pipes to a sewage treatment works.

During heavy rainfall, the capacity of the sewer system could be exceeded, and sewage treatment works could be overwhelmed by the increased volume, meaning sewage would flood homes, roads and open spaces. But in Bazalgette’s system, this risk is mitigated by combined sewer overflows (CSOs). CSOs are just like overflow valves on bathtubs. During periods of heavy rainfall, they allow excess volume in the sewage system to flow directly into the Thames.

Though far-sighted, the system’s Victorian creators did not anticipate the volume of wastewater that would eventually be entering the London sewage system. The original Bazalgette design was for a rate of untreated sewage discharges into the River Thames of 12 per year. By the 2010s, however, the system was discharging about once per week. In a typical year 39 million cubic metres of sewage overflows into the river, but it can be well over 120 million cubic metres in higher rainfall years, with serious consequences for water quality, ecological health, and public health.

Bazalgette had calculated that his Victorian infrastructure would need to provide for a population of at least 4 million. By the time of Bazalgette's death in 1891, the population had already exceeded 4 million. By the 2010s, Bazalgette’s system was serving over 8 million Londoners (a number that has continued to grow in the years since).

The Thames Tideway Tunnel

Given the volume of untreated water polluting the River Thames, a remedial plan was drawn up in 2000, the Thames Tideway Strategic Study (TTSS).

This study recommended the construction of a single, large tunnel which could store the excess backlog of sewage wastewater and rainwater generated during periods of heavy rainfall (which would otherwise overflow into the river) until it could be treated at the sewage works in Beckton.

The Thames Tideway Tunnel project, as it became known, involved the UK’s largest ever planning application up to that point in time, with 125,000 pages submitted in total. The hard copy was stored on a 16m-long shelf. The two copies that had to be hand-delivered to the Planning Inspectorate, each weighing one tonne, were transported in separate vans.

Thames Water, the monopoly water utility business for the Greater London area, was deemed operationally unsuited to manage the Tunnel's risks due to the project’s scale and complexity, so Bazalgette Tunnel Limited (Tideway) was created as a special-purpose company through a public-private partnership to finance and deliver the project.

Firstly, a competitive tender was run for investors, and delivered a record low private sector financing rate for this kind of monopoly infrastructure, primarily due to the inclusion of a government backstop that protected investors against certain low-probability but high-impact risk events. Additionally, the main tunnel was split into three target price contracts (for West, Central, and East) under a “Win Only One Rule”. This diversified the risk of project failure by ensuring that each company could secure a maximum of one section. And the target price model of risk/reward sharing incentivised contractors to share financial responsibility, with parties absorbing 50% of any cost overruns and benefiting from 50% of any underspends.

Besides this, the project offers a case study in nuanced stakeholder management amid impassioned resistance against the development.

Phil Stride, the executive who oversaw the Tunnel’s delivery, chronicled the drawn-out and often contentious engagement process in his book, revealing how the project’s leadership navigated challenging community dynamics.

“Many local residents questioned the actual need to connect the associated CSOs to the Thames Tideway Tunnel. ‘Stop the Shaft’ were the principal catalyst behind local opposition at Barn Elms… There were a number of very challenging and emotionally charged public meetings… The most notable points of the meeting were that Stephen Greenhalgh had the whole audience chanting in opposition of the project.

One of the most surreal experiences in the whole engagement process was the meeting at St Mary’s Church Hall in Putney, with Graham Stevens of Bluegreen UK and a very tolerant Justine Greening, to discuss blue-green alternatives to the project and how nanotechnology would soon make our solution redundant. We concluded that said nanotechnology was still being developed, and is yet unproven.”

Source: Phil Stride (2019) The Thames Tideway Tunnel: Preventing Another Great Stink

As with almost all UK large-scale public infrastructure projects in recent decades, the estimated cost for the project inflated over time. The 2021-22 annual report gave an updated cost of £4.3bn, while the final cost was reported to be around £5bn.

In summary

The Thames Tideway Tunnel was first proposed in 2000. Today, 25 years later, it is finally fully operational (as of February 2025) and projected to reduce untreated wastewater flowing into the Thames by 95%.

Just as Bazalgette’s original system has served London for over 150 years, the Thames Tideway Tunnel promises to protect the Thames and serve Londoners for generations to come.

For London, the Tunnel has solved a critical infrastructure and environmental challenge. In doing so, it offers an example of how a modern city can deliver transformative projects at scale amid increasing complexity and competing stakeholder interests.

There are still plenty of challenges. Sewage treatment processes at facilities such as Beckton, now the largest sewage treatment works in Europe, are imperfect. Likewise, a permanent wastewater monitoring network for public health surveillance has yet to be established, following the collapse of the temporary solution delivered during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The story of London’s sewage system is far from over.

In the last year, the High Court has handed down judgments in the following cases:

• a dispute between members of the Qatari royal family over the ownership of a Mughal-era diamond;1

• a Dutch aircraft owner claiming it was owed money by a Vietnamese airline;2

• litigation between Deutsche Bank and the Italian Province of Brescia over an interest rate swap;3

• allegations of US $874 million paid unlawfully by the former head of Kuwait’s social security pension scheme;4

• and a dispute between a Greek importer and Maersk, a Danish shipping line, concerning a shipment on the Klaipeda, a vessel flagged in the Marshall Islands, sailing from Dubai to Piraeus, the port of Athens.5

None of these disputes had any material connection to London or Britain, but in all cases the parties chose to use English law and English courts. Why?

When clouds of pessimism hang over Britain’s economy, it is important that we remember the many things that Britain and London do well. Our politicians regularly talk up the tech sector, or the financial sector, or the creative sector, but there is one sector that is unquestionably doing better than all three. It is growing, it shows no signs of stopping, and it is a sector in which London is, to use the cliché, genuinely world-leading. That sector is international commercial litigation.

In 2013, before the invasion of Crimea, Ukraine issued bonds to the value of US$3 billion which were bought by the Russian government. The bonds were held on trust for Russia by a company set up for that purpose, which was incorporated in England and Wales. The parties also decided that any issues arising under the agreement would be litigated in the English courts.

Ukraine subsequently alleged that the bonds were issued under duress, because Russia had applied unlawful and illegitimate pressure on Ukraine, threatening its territory and intimidating Ukraine through trade sanctions.

The issue ultimately went to the Supreme Court, as it raised a novel point of contract law.6 But what is remarkable is that the parties were still happy for their dispute to be litigated in London. The case was heard in 2019 and 2021, after the Novichok poisonings that irreparably damaged relations between Russia and the United Kingdom. It was, as the Supreme Court put it, “a striking sign of the level of international confidence in British justice”.7

This dispute, which has only nominal relevance to Britain, came to London because the parties wanted it to: when parties make a contract, they can choose the legal system governing the agreement and under which disputes will be decided.

Because English law is so attractive to businesses and wealthy individuals, the Law Society estimates that English law governs £545 trillion worth of over-the-counter derivatives, £10 trillion worth of metals trades, and £250 billion of mergers and acquisitions deals.8 When these parties go to court, they end up in London: in the year ending March 2024, 64% of litigants in the Commercial Court (a part of the High Court which exclusively deals with commercial work) came from abroad.9 This work is just one part of a legal services industry whose net exports were worth £7.6 billion in 2023.10

It must be acknowledged that commercial litigation is an outlier within England’s justice system. The criminal and civil justice systems are both in crisis: legal aid has been cut, courts have been closed, and there are not enough judges.

These problems are serious, and need fixing. But we should be thankful that, in spite of this, the reputation of English commercial law remains strong.11

Perhaps most importantly, this is because we have a long-lasting, strong tradition of the rule of law. This means that the law is applied consistently to everybody, the procedure is fair, and judges are independent.

For parties from countries which do not have a strong rule of law, this is almost certainly the biggest attraction. We take it for granted in Britain that the courts are fair, that contracts will be upheld, that property rights are certain, that there will be remedies against cheats and fraudsters. Sadly, in many parts of the world none of these things are true: as Gordon Brown once said, “in establishing the rule of law, the first five centuries are always the hardest”. The courts of London offer a sanctuary for companies wishing to do business in countries which have not had five centuries to develop the rule of law.

For international parties, the law itself is also attractive. English law is based on common law, a body of judge-made law that has evolved over the centuries. This contrasts with civil law systems, where the fundamentals of the law are laid down in a single code which was drafted all in one go, often in the nineteenth century. Common law is able to adapt flexibly to changing circumstances: for instance, cryptoassets have been recognised as a form of property in England.12 English law is so attractive that the Dubai International Financial Centre, a special economic zone in Dubai which tries to compete with London as a dispute resolution centre, uses English law by default.

Getting expert advice on English law from abroad is easy: London has branch offices of over 200 law firms from 40 different countries.13 Getting advice doesn’t have to mean going to London: there are 6,500 English-qualified lawyers working abroad,14 and every major global city hosts the branch offices of several English law firms.

Lawyers have been the butt of jokes for centuries. Many people instinctively agree with Shakespeare’s Dick the Butcher, “the first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”15 They can seem like a bunch of overpaid, overclever people making abstruse points about the meaning of words. We are, however, only able to make these jokes because we take the rule of law for granted. Argument in court may seem pointless and expensive, but in fact it is the rule of law in action: before a court can enforce legal rights and obligations, it first has to determine what those rights and obligations are. ‘Lawyering’, within reason, is the golden thread that ensures each side gets to put its case forward, and that guarantees justice is done.

And certainly, taking the advice of Dick the Butcher would mean killing off more than just lawyers. It would mean killing off Legal London which, more than just a source of revenue for lawyers and exports for Britain, is a guarantor of the rule of law all over the world. Our legal system is something that we should celebrate.

In the clamour for a greener, car-free London, planners and politicians have long pushed a 'one-size-fits-all' approach to travel. Yet beneath the London-wide averages lies a far more nuanced reality – one that reveals London as not one city, but two distinct halves living different transport lives.

Transport for London's latest report on car ownership trends* tells a compelling story that challenges the prevailing assumptions about how Londoners move around their city.

Most striking is the near-mirrored divide between inner and outer London on car ownership. In inner London, almost two-thirds of households (62%) are car-free, with this percentage largely stable since 2010. Meanwhile, in outer London – where the majority of Londoners live – only a third of households manage without a car, a number also little-changed since 2010 despite more than a decade of campaigning to reduce car use.

Looking at the latest data on how Londoners get to work, the differences become even more pronounced. In outer London, approximately one million people drive to work. That’s more than three times the number driving to work in inner London, in fact it’s more than get to work by rail in inner London. Rail remains the dominant mode across both zones, but the car's role in outer London's transport ecosystem is significant and irreplaceable for many people.

There’s an even wider gap when we consider household composition. The overwhelming majority of one-person households in London are car-free, at 71%. But for a couple with children the picture changes dramatically, as nearly 80% own at least one car and a quarter own multiple vehicles. These aren't casual lifestyle choices; they reflect fundamental realities about how different households tend to function.

It is interesting to reflect on single parent households. There is a 30 percentage point gap in car ownership compared with couples with children. While many adults living alone are happily car-free by choice, can we assume that’s also true for all those single parents? Or would some like to enjoy the convenience of a car but can’t afford it? If so, how might they feel about policies that deliberately raise the cost of owning a car? A tax on the rich, or pulling car ownership even further from their grasp?

The relatively stable average of car-free London households also conceals an intriguing east-west divide that has emerged in the last decade. While the proportion of car-free households has grown in most central and western boroughs, to the east it has fallen. Are policy, demographic, or economic factors at the local level having more influence than the London-wide transport strategy?”

The Mayor’s transport strategy has set ambitious targets to reduce car ownership, which transport campaigners often criticise him for failing to meet. But the evidence suggests he might be swimming against a powerful tide of demographic reality. Despite more than a decade of campaigns to change travel habits, TfL's own data shows that car ownership patterns remain stubbornly aligned with household size, structure, and location.

Furthermore, TfL's data challenges the very notion of a traffic crisis. Their 2024 Travel In London Annual Overview** states: "Despite rising population, road traffic volumes in London have been broadly stable over the last couple of decades." It goes on to note that although traffic levels rebounded from the pandemic faster than public transport, “they also soon levelled out at just below pre-pandemic levels and have been relatively stable since.” The case for more and more car restrictions based on traffic is far from clear-cut.

The reality is that London's transport future requires nuance, not dogma. The car-free ideal works splendidly for single professionals in well-connected areas but seems impractical for larger households and those living in areas where public transport options are more limited.

Transport policy crafted for a non-existent average Londoner is doomed: the mean conceals a multimodal reality. To build a transport system that works for all Londoners, let’s acknowledge these fundamental differences. Outer London families aren't clinging to cars out of stubbornness, they're responding rationally to daily realities. Forcing them out of cars would make their lives worse and harm London's economy, which may explain why the attempt is struggling.

A smarter approach would seek to harness cars' strengths while mitigating their drawbacks, recognising that the persistence of cars in outer London is signalling the value they add. It would similarly recognise that while cycling is less common in outer London, across inner London it’s as much a part of the transport network as cars and buses so needs taking seriously. If we’re not thinking about London transport in this way, we’re not really thinking about it at all.

Community notes:

• We are looking forward to seeing lots of you at our first pub meet up on Wednesday. We’ll be doing a few of these informal events over the course of the year, along with the bigger set-piece discussions.

• Write for us! We are always looking for more guest contributors. Lots of our recent pieces have been about big policy ideas, but we’d also like more pieces about things which are cool or interesting about London - or things which other cities have which we can learn from. Details about how to get in contact are here.

* “Travel in London 2024 Focus report: Car ownership trends”, Transport for London, December 2024. (https://content.tfl.gov.uk/travel-in-london-2024-car-ownership-trends-acc.pdf)

** “Travel in London 2024 Annual overview”, Transport for London, December 2024. (https://content.tfl.gov.uk/travel-in-london-2024-annual-overview-acc.pdf)

If you’ve ever been young and obsessed with politics, you will know how I felt when I first walked into Parliament. Like me, many young people got their first in the door of British politics working in one of the many historic buildings around the parliamentary estate .

But the centuries of history that make Westminster Palace so awe-inspiring are starting to take their toll. Today, much of the estate is prone to flooding, new discoveries of asbestos, and electrical fires. Many offices are on borrowed time, and will have to be closed.

It’s understandable that MPs in previous Parliaments refused to “decant” from the building for refurbishments. After all, the average tenure of an MP is 8 years, while the restoration of Parliament is estimated to take 15-20 years if they all relocate. Many parliamentarians would go their whole careers without stepping foot in the mother of all parliaments. It’s a long time to go without the famous jerk chicken.

But without relocation, the timeline for refurbishment stretches to 50-70 years, and the costs skyrocket. But that’s the price we are all paying for a Parliament which can’t face change.

It’s become a truism to complain about Britain’s inability to build fast enough to meet its needs. The delay in restoring our Parliament is our ultimate test. Perhaps there, the approach we take can set the tone for the innovation and industriousness we want to see the government apply to rebuilding Britain at large.

Daniel K. Ludwig, a German-American industrialist active after World War II, foresaw that the increasing popularity of newspapers would drive up the cost of paper. However, producing paper posed challenges: growing trees required time and space, and finding suitable land, climate, and labour in the U.S. was difficult. At the same time, constructing pulp mills in less developed countries was a slow and complex process. Instead of importing wood, Ludwig devised a novel solution: placing a pulp mill on a barge and moving it to where the wood supply was abundant.

The concept of transporting entire built structures on barges, rather than just raw materials, left a lasting impression on Norwegian engineer Svein Kjelstrup Olsen. Living in Battersea by the Thames, Svein recalled Ludwig’s innovation while watching boats pass. In 2018, he read Parliament’s first restoration report, which had briefly considered but ultimately dismissed the idea of a floating structure on the Thames, arguing that it would require the entire river breadth.

Accustomed to spatial problem-solving, Svein questioned this claim. He obtained a floor plan for Parliament and calculated that both the Houses and the central lobby could fit within the Port of London Authority’s designated secure zone- an area already restricted from boat crossings and moorings.

The concept for a waterside Parliament presents numerous advantages. It is the cheapest, requires limited capital expenditure and spares taxpayers any upfront costs, providing a reassuring demonstration of financial prudence. The building modules needed are constructed in Hull and Littlehampton, and then transported via barges to be assembled on site. It is the most environmentally sustainable option, with photovoltaic panels on the roof creating a carbon-neutral facility that addresses the other uniquely British building obstacle of inadequate grid energy. It is also the kindest option for staff members, who can all relocate to the new structure without going far.

When I first met Svein to discuss the project, I wanted to know why this was so unique, and not used more widely for temporary construction. With practised Nordic stoicism, he explained that the technology already exists, the expertise is readily available, the materials needed have been sourced, and the companies willing to deliver the structures have already been engaged.

Svein showed me the state-of-the-art facilities' beautiful, light, and airy designs. They can be constructed within 24 months of planning approval and can save approximately £1 billion by allowing the full vacation of the deteriorating Palace of Westminster. The other options to decant parliamentarians into Richmond House or the QEII conference centre are slower and costlier. They would house the Commons and the Lords separately, which makes the security of both less practical, along with the hosting of grand occasions like the state opening of Parliament.

Waterside is an opportunity to fast-track the renovation of Parliament to protect our heritage, and to do so without wasting money at a time when the state needs it more than ever. Privately leased, once it is no longer needed the barge units can be repurposed into affordable housing (Svein estimates 160-270 units depending on size),

Our physical environment profoundly impacts our thoughts and actions. The last major additions to London’s landscape are quickly receding into the past – the Shard in 2012 and the London Eye in 2000. If, as Paul Graham said, Florence inspired the genius of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, and Silicon Valley shaped visionaries like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, what does the lack of ingenuity about restoring Parliament do to affect the confidence of our leaders that they can rebuild Britain?

Londoners are tired of the visible decay in our infrastructure. The new class of parliamentarians have a four-year window to prove they are serious about building. I say they start with their own house, and fix the roof while the sun is shining (or at least before the rain gets worse).

“London’s air quality is now on track to meet UK legal limits by next year – 184 years earlier than previously projected. Despite this progress, air pollution levels in London will continue to exceed WHO clean air guidelines in 2025 and 2030.” - Mayor of London

London has a long history of fighting air pollution, from its nickname ‘the big smoke’ in the Victorian era to its ‘pea soup’ and ‘Great smog’ in the 1950s. These challenges have been with legislation and policy designed to improve public health – the Clean Air Acts of 1952 and 1968 reduced industrial emissions, switched home heating to cleaner options like gas, and large sources of pollution like power stations were moved away from population centres.

In the 21st century, London’s air pollution problems stem primarily from transport emissions. Internal combustion engines and tyre abrasion create a combination of toxic gases such as Nitrogen Oxide, particulate matter, and volatile non-organic compounds (VONC) which end up in our lungs. The toll on public health is significant, with air pollution causing approximately 9,400 premature deaths per year, cardiovascular conditions like asthma, as well as stunted lungs and early childhood obesity. London made a grim first in legal history when Ella Kissi-Debrah was the first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death.

Despite the scale of the challenge, London had been making progress. The Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) introduced in 2016, has been the main tool for tackling air pollution, and a successful one at that. ULEZ charges vehicles whose engines are below a certain euro standard. The European emission standards categorise vehicles across seven levels, and set emission thresholds for pollutants. By charging vehicles whose engines fall below specific thresholds, ULEZ has pushed older, more polluting cars off the road. Since its introduction, air pollution concentrations have fallen by 65% in the very centre of London, by 53% in inner London, and by 45% in outer London.

While ULEZ has been highly successful, it should be a stepping stone on the way to further reforms. One option would be to raise the engine standards required to avoid paying the ULEZ charge even higher, but this whilst this would reduce exhaust emissions it would do nothing to tackle the increasingly well-evidenced pollution caused by tyre-wear.

In fact, an even bolder plan is in play. Courtesy of some brilliant reporting by Jim Waterson in London-centric, we now know the Mayor’s plan was to replace ULEZ with a much more ambitious plan to introduce road-user charging in London. The plan would’ve seen anyone driving in the capital charged per mile, with rates varying depending on whether they were driving in inner or outer London. TfL’s modelling suggests it would have resulted in 600,000 fewer car journeys.

Unfortunately, this cleaner air future has been cancelled. In the run up to his third term, London Mayor Sadiq Khan ruled out both further changes to ULEZ and road-user charging – likely caused by the bruising Uxbridge by-election in 2023 where ULEZ expansion was clearly a decisive issue in the Conservative victory.

With no further changes planned to ULEZ and the road-user charging scrapped, what next for London’s pollution policy?

The road ahead

In lieu of a major policy change such as ULEZ or road-user charging, the Mayor’s office will focus on a plethora of smaller policies to bring emissions down across the capital. In practice these take two forms, reducing journeys taken by private vehicles, or electrifying transport which eliminates exhaust emissions.

The Mayor’s office continues to promote public transport, active travel and pedestrianisation, all of which will help reduce private travel in polluting vehicles. This includes segregated cycle lanes and cycleways (which route cyclists through quiet backstreets), junction redesign (to improve cycling safety) such as Holborn junction and Lambeth Bridge. The most eye-catching is the Mayor’s proposal for pedestrianisation of Oxford Street (although unfortunately Soho will not be included).

London is a leader in electric vehicle adoption, both in private vehicles (where London leads the UK) and in public transport. The Mayor’s office and the councils have supported EV transition, sometimes through direct funding rollout of electric charging as well as supporting electric and cargo delivery networks.

When it comes to electrifying public transport, TfL currently has plans to green the fleet by 2030 (funding permitting). Currently 17% (about 1,500 of 8,776 strong fleet) of TfL’s buses don’t generate emissions, and an additional £500 million is being spent to purchase another 1,000 by 2026. Given buses account for ~13% of all journeys in the capital, this should have a significant impact on air pollution.

There are bolder steps the Mayor could still take. One option would be to increase the congestion charge – a fixed charge of £15 for anyone driving into central London during peak hours. As of 2025, EV users will be charged the same as any other vehicle (an example of how the mix of policies can sometimes work against each other – in this case pitting congestion against electric vehicle adoption). The Mayor could instead further increase the price for non-EV drivers, discouraging congestion or encouraging drivers to switch to electric vehicles.

Bolder still would be to double down on repurposing London’s spaces. TfL is responsible for over 6,712 parking spaces (excluding accessibility spaces). The Centre for Cities have proposed repurposing spaces away from car use in favour of outdoor seating for shops, bars and restaurants, active travel (bike stands), or green spaces. And evidence from Amsterdam shows reducing parking spaces in a city centre nudges people to use public or active travel options instead. If the Mayor wanted to be really bold, he should request control of further arterial routes to ensure active travel options are not blocked and deepen pedestrianisation in the centre.

Exciting as these ideas seem to be, unless the primary tools to reduce pollution (ULEZ and road-user charging), air pollution will be hard to reduce further. Instead, Londoners will be reliant on piecemeal policies that vary by borough, and at times conflict with other goals such as reducing congestion. The capital’s air and the health of its citizens will improve, but slowly and unevenly.

Community notes:

• We have had amazing responses to our Greater Heathrow campaign to support the government’s third runway, sign the petition to help!

• A few Greater Londoners have been asking how they can write for the Project, so we published a how-to guide here. Get in touch at founders@greaterlondon.co with any pitches or questions.

• Thank you to everyone who came to our event with Professor Tony Travers on “who governs London?” We had a full house!

  Subscribe to our Luma calendar so you don’t miss future events, and join the WhatsApp group to keep up with what we’re up to.

Sign the petition to support a third runway at Heathrow.

For London to be the greatest city in the world, it needs an airport to match. The Government is right to start by building the third runway at Heathrow, and the Mayor is wrong to try and block it.

Campaigners are already lining up to fight the plan, as they did when Tony Blair approved a third runway in 2003, and when MPs approved the plan in 2018.

But we can’t let a small but vocal group speak for Londoners, because the expansion of Heathrow is in all of our best interests.

So today we are launching Londoners for Heathrow, the campaign in support of a third runway. Read about why we’re doing this, and support us by signing the petition.

Heathrow is an essential part of London’s economy, and its future.

In 2019 (pre-pandemic), it was still the world’s second busiest airport by international travel numbers. It is the perfect stopping-off point for international travellers between America, Africa and Eurasia, and for air freight taking the same journeys. And it means Londoners themselves get a better deal on international air travel, maximising the economies of scale from travelling alongside international tourists coming to London and travellers on layover.

But it was supposed to be even bigger. When it opened for civilian use in 1946 it had six runways, and the plan was for it to have nine in total. Over time it closed the smaller runways, which weren’t big enough for modern jets, on the assumption that it would rebuild longer ones when demand grew. That demand peaked in the 2000s, and with only the two existing runways it has been operating at full capacity (a landing every 45 seconds) since then.

But the rest of the world hasn’t stopped the clock like we have. Heathrow is losing out on air traffic from nearby competitors – Schiphol (six runways) and Charles de Gaulle (four runways). Internationally, we are an outlier in how small our airports are. Denver International has six runways, Atlanta has five, and Beijing has three. Dubai also has two, but plans to have more, and currently runs flights over 24 hours a day which makes numbers much less constrained. We are highly unusual in how much we are limiting Heathrow.

Air travel isn’t without its downsides. Aviation produces about 7 per cent of global carbon emissions. But the UK is already on track to have the lowest per capita emissions of any major economy by 2030, and it is perfectly possible to expand Heathrow whilst reducing overall emissions. To give one example of how a larger Heathrow can actually help cut emissions, it would allow more direct long-distance flights rather than layovers, meaning shorter journey times overall and therefore less fuel consumption.

Source: Heathrow Expansion: Britain’s Runway to Growth. David Lawrence, Pedro Serodio, UKDayOne.

And for residents, having one of the busiest airports in the world can be a mixed blessing. Noise pollution is bad for public health (something we’ve written about in the past). But ultimately, this price is worth paying. New air traffic will be focussed on the new runway, which is further west over less densely-populated areas so will cause less pollution. And in the long term, noise pollution can be reduced through better aircraft design – the economics of which will be helped by allowing more flights.

The most important thing about Heathrow is that it’s already a hub. Expanding Gatwick, City, Stansted or Luton isn’t enough, because it’s much more efficient to create more capacity for passengers and freight at the location where there’s already the best infrastructure for them.

And more capacity doesn’t just mean more flights. It means flights can be spaced out more, reducing the impact of delays, and the massive emissions from planes forced to circle in the sky for hours whilst they wait for a scarce landing slot.

Ultimately, there is no future for a better London without a bigger Heathrow. We are lucky to have the world’s best location for an airport right on our doorstep. 22 million people live within 100 kilometres of the site. London is perfectly positioned as a link between the Americas, Europe and Asia, which is why so many major firms still choose to have their head offices here. Our capital’s success depends on Heathrow growing, and we have to let it.

Too often, it is just the voices of a small number of NIMBY campaigners who get heard by politicians, and we want to change that. So our petition asks for your postcode, and we’ll be emailing your local representatives to let them know how many people in their constituency support the third runway going ahead.

Please support the campaign for a third runway by signing the petition.

Back in July, we launched this project in a pub in Clerkenwell. Dozens of people squeezed into an upstairs room to hear about it on one of the hottest days of the year, and plenty hung around afterwards enjoying the evening sun outside. London’s a lot colder now, and patrons are more likely to be inside enjoying a drink and a meal, but soon they may not be able to at all at that particular pub.

The Sekforde’s licensing is under review by Islington Council, because of noise complaints from a small number of local residents. The review could roll back their licensing for outside space, reducing the capacity the pub has to serve people.

Across London, pubs are struggling. Higher rents, prices, and taxes are all putting pressure on their cost base, and customers are already paying much more for a pint than they used to. With fewer commuters into London, and more working from home, inner London pubs are particularly under pressure. Across the country, fifty pubs shut every month in the first half of 2024.

With pubs operating on very thin margins, more licensing restrictions are tantamount to closure for many, by reducing the amount of money they can bring in on the busiest days even more. The Sekforde’s manager told the London Beer City newsletter, that “if these changes are implemented, we won’t be able to operate as a pub”.

The problem is that councils like Islington care more about the views of a small minority of vocal residents, over the views of many people who commute into them to enjoy the area. But Central London isn’t just for residents, it’s for the rest of us as well. For all the benefits you get living in the centre of London – access to amazing parks, museums, shops, food and drink, the price is putting up with other people enjoying them as well.

The Sekforde has been a pub since 1829. Islington Council will decide the pub’s future on the 7th of January. For the Sekforde, it’s a fight for survival, but it’s also part of a bigger battle for the rest of us who want the city to be vibrant and bustling.

We promoted the campaign to keep it open in our last post as well, but want to make a real push today. Please, email licensing@islington.gov.uk saying you oppose the changes to The Sekforde’s licensing before the deadline today. And if you live in Islington, include your postcode, and copy in your local councillor (if you don’t know who they are, you can find out here by putting in your address).

I had a lot of fun getting my pilot’s licence over the summer. The learning curve was brilliant – from radio communications to engines, aerodynamics, and navigation. But as I logged hours, I realised that what captivated me wasn’t just the technical elements; it was the entire ecosystem of flight. The precision, perspective, and coordination required to keep everything running smoothly are nothing short of extraordinary. Not to mention, I am a creature of habit and love checklists – the aviation industry takes this to another level and it's like living The Checklist Manifesto in real-time.

As I learned more about airspace it has made me even more convinced that London can do more to expand its position as a global powerhouse.

London’s airspace

To give context, the UK’s aviation sector delivers huge economic benefits, contributing mid-single digits to UK GDP while supporting 1.6 million jobs either directly or indirectly.

London itself is home to one of the busiest airspaces on the planet, with six major airports – Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, London City, and Southend – handling over 4,000 flights on any given day, or one every 20 seconds. Heathrow alone, Europe’s busiest airport, sees more than 80 million passengers annually.

So, why is London’s airspace so effective?

• A network of complementary airports: Each airport serves a specific role. Heathrow handles long-haul flights, Gatwick manages a mix of budget and international trips, and London City is perfect for business travellers. This segmentation keeps the system efficient and flexible – a smart design that many cities could learn from.

• Quick, seamless transport: From central London, you can reach most of the airports in around an hour – something you can’t say for many other big cities. Whether it’s the Underground, buses, or taxis, London’s transport network ensures getting to the airport isn’t a headache.

• World-class infrastructure: While each London airport may not meet the Lee Kuan Yew benchmark, collectively they surpass most European and American equivalents in operational efficiency and passenger experience.

• Air traffic control at its finest: London’s airspace, one of the most complex in the world, operates like an orchestrated symphony. The volume of aircraft – jets, private planes, and helicopters – that air traffic controllers handle daily is incredible, a true testament to the precision behind London’s vast, invisible infrastructure.

The result is clear: increased tourism, less congestion at airports, and quicker travel times. London’s connectivity doesn’t just facilitate tourism; it enhances commercial trade and increases the appeal for international companies to relocate here.

Staying ahead of the game

But recent innovations in air travel have caught my attention, making me think that if London doesn’t continue to push boundaries, it could be knocked off its top spot. Chinese cities are exploring electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, while in Dublin, a company is delivering coffee by drone in minutes to people’s gardens.

Staying ahead will require addressing typical concerns associated with increased air travel – noise, congestion, and environmental impact. However, innovations are already tackling these issues, and it would be short-sighted to ignore meaningful progress, especially given the long-term economic benefits.

• Noise: Aircraft noise is a well-known concern, particularly for those living near flight paths. I live under one, yet I’m still all for more planes in the sky. But technology is reducing noise pollution, and modern aircraft like the Airbus A320neo and Boeing 787 are up to 50% quieter than their predecessors. Another avenue worth exploring is having airports accommodate narrow-bodied planes landing at steeper angles, as is already the case at London City Airport.

• Stagnant airport capacity: Contrary to popular belief, Heathrow’s flight numbers have been stagnant for over two decades. It’s a crying shame that other major European airports have surpassed Heathrow in passenger growth, with much more aggressive expansion strategies.

• Technological advancements for the environment: The industry is proactively addressing environmental concerns - Airbus has committed to developing a hydrogen-powered commercial aircraft by 2035. Airlines are investing in sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs), which can reduce carbon emissions by up to 80%, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), and electric aircraft will (eventually) provide a route to even lower emissions.

The future ahead

To ensure London’s airspace remains at the cutting edge of global aviation, we need to embrace innovation and push the boundaries.

We must expand airport capacity:

• Expanding airport capacity is crucial for London’s future. Heathrow’s third and fourth runways are needed to accommodate the growing demand; by the mid-2030s, most of London’s airports are expected to be at full capacity. We can do it, China already creates eight new airports (not runways) a year and has built nearly 100 airports during the time it’s taken to debate Heathrow’s third runway.

• Gatwick’s Northern Runway Project is facing local and environmental opposition to moving a runway just 12 metres – a move that is projected to inject £1 billion into the local economy and create 14,000 jobs. It’s been six years since the original proposal with nothing approved to date.

• The cutting edge of air travel is shifting back towards speed. Innovations in supersonic travel are on the horizon, and London must be ready for Mach 2 flights, where trips to New York will take as long as a flight to Spain does today. Companies like Boom Supersonic are developing aircraft that could make this a reality by the end of the decade.

• Additionally, we could optimise slot allocation through auctions, as discussed in Foundations, to improve efficiency and competitiveness. By auctioning time slots, we ensure they go to airlines that value them most, fostering competition and perhaps opening up new avenues such as priority slots for lower-emission planes.

We must embrace eVTOLs:

• São Paulo, a city with a similar land area to London, has over 400 helipads, far more than London's limited helipad infrastructure. With the rise of eVTOLs, we need more helipad infrastructure. Imagine using the Thames as a corridor for eVTOL taxis, cutting travel times from Canary Wharf to Heathrow to mere minutes – not to mention how scenic that would be. This is already happening in San Francisco, Dubai, and Los Angeles, which plans to implement eVTOL-based air taxis for the 2028 Olympics.

We must embrace drone technology:

• When I saw Manna’s drone delivering coffee in Dublin, it felt like a glimpse into the future. Whether it’s delivering emergency medical equipment, packages, or food, drones are faster, cheaper, and quieter than most traditional transport methods. What’s not to love? By designating drone flight paths at lower altitudes (below 250 feet) while maintaining safe distances from major airports, the city can unlock drone technology’s potential without compromising safety.

Doubling down on strengths

London has always been a city of ambition and innovation. By 2030, we need a fully integrated network of eVTOL services, supersonic flight capabilities, and drones in the sky. Expansion plans for Heathrow and Gatwick should be greenlit and accelerated, while cutting-edge technologies like hydrogen-powered aircraft and autonomous air traffic control systems should be embraced and tested within the city’s skies. The Mayor needs a ‘Sky Plan’, and a person to lead it. Now is the time to push the boundaries of what’s possible. The benefits of embracing this change are enormous: more efficient travel, faster logistics, and a thriving economy.

Community notes:

• Thank you to everyone who came to our second event on ‘Cultural capital: how London shaped the arts. In conversation with Munira Mirza’. We had a packed house at the Sekforde, photos below, and an update about our next event coming soon!

• The Sekforde is a great pub, we also held our launch event there in July. But it’s under threat because Islington Council wants to change its licensing. Please help by emailing licensing@islington.gov.uk saying you oppose the council’s planned changes to The Sekforde’s license, before the 17th of December. If you live in Islington, you should also include your address, and copy in your local councillor, whose details you can find by putting your address in here.

• Read of the week: Jim Waterson’s expose on illegal gambling on Westminster Bridge.

• Write for us: if you care about London and want to write about it, then send us your ideas! You don’t have to have written before — many of our authors haven’t.

• Join the GLP WhatsApp community here

Have a great weekend,

Joe and the GLP team

The Greater London Project publishes guest posts from our community. Anyone can write for us – you don’t have to be a professional writer, just passionate about London. We publish a few different kinds of pieces:

1. Ideas to make London better, primarily from a policy perspective. Examples include these posts on building more housing and safer streets.

2. Ideas from other major cities which London could benefit from. Examples include these posts on train networks and self-driving cars.

3. Ideas from London that the rest of the world could learn from. Despite talking about lots of the things which make London great in our launch post, we haven’t published any of these yet, and would love to.

4. Pieces about parts of London’s past, present or near future which are just cool, and deserve more attention. An example looking at London’s history is this post on street markets. Not every piece has to have a ‘policy angle’ if it's describing something interesting and important which other Greater Londoners should know about!

But that list is non-exhaustive, and if you have an idea for something you’d like to write then get in touch to tell us about it!

We are especially interested in pieces about:

• Megaprojects: where should we build the next bridge across the Thames? How could we expand the airports around London? Could we divert traffic through tunnels to pedestrianise more of the city centre? 

• Public health: how do we make the tube less polluted and noisy? How do we improve sanitation (toilets and sewers)?

• London’s parks: their history, management and lessons we can learn from them about improving public spaces.

• Architecture: which parts of London are the most beautiful and why? 

• Transport: what is happening with the Bakerloo line extension, or Hammersmith Bridge? Where would you put more tram routes?

• ‘Work from London’: what changing patterns of work in white collar industries mean for the centre of London.

• Cultural capital: what do you love about London’s galleries, museums, music venues, nightclubs?

• Governance: the history of London’s local governments, and how they function (and don’t) today.

• Sport: what can we learn from other cities about how to make London more friendly to big matches and crowds, where to show more sport in public places, and how to get more people into local teams.

• Crime and anti-social behaviour: clever ways to make London friendlier and safer.

And we’re open to other subjects as well. If you’re searching for inspiration, you can read about some of the things we think are cool in our launch post, or why we are doing this in the post where we explained why the GLP exists.

We want pieces to be between 500 and 800 words + up to three images (if relevant). But we will take longer pieces in some cases, and are happy to have shorter pieces (but the scope needs to be really tight). 

Pitching

If you want to pitch us an article, please send over 1-3 short paragraphs summarising what your article will claim, or report on, or argue, to the email address below. Your paragraphs should clearly show what idea and/or argument your piece will demonstrate and what core facts you will rely on to support it. 

It doesn’t need to be overly formal, but we want you to convey why it really matters to you. Like our guide to writing for us, it should be in plain English - if a technical concept is really important to your pitch, then you need to explain it so we can understand it. 

If you have more than one idea, that’s perfectly alright, send us a few and we can help you choose one which is the best fit for the Greater London Project.

It’s important to note that we can’t pay for pieces, any work is entirely voluntary. We will give authors full credit, including linking to their own publications or socials, and we encourage you to repost it. 

All pitches should be sent to founders@greaterlondon.co 

If we want you to write the pitch, we’ll send more guidance, including our style guide.

If you have any questions, just ask. We look forward to hearing from you!

— the GLP team

Trees are fantastic, beautiful and inspiring. You can read about why in dozens of books, including Thomas Pakenham’s homages, Peter Wohlleben’s Secret Life of Trees, and my all-time favourite, Jean Giono’s The Man who Planted Trees.

Trees play just as vital a role in the urban jungle as they do in the real one. London is a forest, which comes with many benefits. Trees reduce pollution, removing 2,481 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere every year, reducing particulate manner and saving lives. Trees prevent floods by preventing 45% of rain water from reaching the ground, also reducing river pollution from sewage run off. Trees cool areas by 5-12 °C, which is increasingly important as London warms, and keeps cooling bills down in the summer months. Trees support ecology, providing the “wildlife corridors” vital for biodiversity in urban areas. Trees reduce noise pollution. Trees promote health and wellbeing, by alleviating and reducing depression and by encouraging more exercise. Trees make areas feel safer, friendlier and can enhance the social value of living in leafy areas.

But in London planting trees is too hard, and funding the planting is difficult. And it doesn’t need to be.

Excellent efforts are being made to plant more urban trees, particularly by “Trees for Streets”, an arm of the charity Trees for Cities. Trees for Streets are doing formidable work, but planting using a conventional approach. But we can get hundreds more trees planted in London if we appeal to the market driven self-interest of residents.

Because trees are valuable. Not just for the reasons above, but also in cold, hard cash terms. Proximity to trees increases property values between 5 and 15%[1]. This increase can be leveraged to plant more trees.

Consider a hypothetical: a London street may have a mix of houses (worth £1.5 million) and flats (£500,000). The street is 150 metres long, with 25 properties on each side (50 total). The total property value of the street is, say £75 million.

Trees could be planted every 30 feet, which equates to 16 per side and 32 in total. They are planted in the pavement in a typical street tree manner. At a cost of £600 to plant each tree, this is a total cost of £20,000, or £400 per property.

With existing value of £75 million, a very conservative 2% increase in value would provide £1.5 million of added value to the whole street. Whether as house, or split into flats, this equates to a £30,000 added value per property.

However, a street full of freshly-planted saplings probably doesn’t add much value, which comes when the trees are mature. To address this, we can discount to obtain the present value. Assuming the saplings will be mature enough in 15 years to add just 2% to property prices, one can discount the £30,000 uplift by 15 years, at 5% per annum. Discounting still creates a return of £14,431 at today’s value; a return on investment of 36x. This ought to be so compelling that every property owner would willingly fund tree planting on their street – private equity would bite your hand off to make an investment with these returns!

London could be much leafier, with far more streets lined with trees. We don’t need another local government programme to do it, or more capital investment from the Mayor, we just need to give residents the right to plant trees on their road. These investments will more than pay for themselves, according to the most conservative of scenarios. Tree-mendous!

Community notes:

• NEW EVENT: ​Join the Greater London Project for our second event: “Cultural capital: how London shaped the arts” In conversation with Munira Mirza

• Join the GLP WhatsApp here

• Reads of the week: Check out Jim Waterson’s new newsletter London Centric, on the Inside story of the Transport for London cyberattack. And definitely read The Londoner’s exclusive on MP Jas Athwal, the landlord of a failing children’s home

We hope you have a great(er) week!

Joe & the Greater London Project team

1 Research includes:

“Does Money Grow on Trees?” (2005)

“Urban Forest Values” (1998)

“The Park as a Determinant of Property Values” (1971)

“Assessing the Benefits and Economic Value of Trees” (2017)

“The Contribution of Trees to Residential Property Values” (1980)

“Green Investment Strategies” (2006)

Anyone living in London will have been disturbed by sudden loud noises, be it a leaf-blower or the music from the neighbour’s garden. Ordinarily, noise is just one of the nuisances to be tolerated for the benefits of living in a city,  and all the perks of people living side-by-side. However the science of how our environment affects our health now shows that more extreme cases of noise pollution are a serious risk to our health. In fact the WHO considers it the second worst environmental harm after air pollution. And while air pollution has been a big focus of public policy, noise pollution is barely considered by London’s government.

Why is noise pollution so harmful? When you hear a loud and particularly intermittent sound – such as a loud engine suddenly accelerating – your body experiences a stress response. Cortisol and adrenaline are released as your body prepares a fight or flight response.  Our heart rates and blood pressure go up, our sympathetic nervous systems are activated, and for the duration of this response your body deprioritises non-essential systems such as immunological functions and cellular repair. 

If this response is only occasional, it doesn’t pose a problem for our health, but repeated exposure to noise pollution (and by extension the constant stress response) creates significant long-term health consequences: heightened risk of heart attack, hypertension, Type 2 diabetes, strokes, and of course hearing loss. It also affects our mental health with noise pollution linked to anxiety and depression. So much so that  the WHO estimates that in Western Europe nearly one million life years are lost to noise pollution every year.

Noise isn’t just bad for our health, it's also bad for learning. A study in the US of 94,000 schools showed those closest to arterial roads or aviation had higher levels of stress hormones, lower reading scores and heightened hyperactivity, and similar studies have found the same in the UK. Workers aren’t spared either, a 2019 DEFRA study Government estimates the annual social cost of urban road noise is up to £10bn due to health problems related to noise, productivity loss among workers, and the cost of noise mitigation measures.

So how much is too much? We measure noise using the decibel system, a logarithmic scale where 70 decibels (db) is a 100x louder than 60. A quiet room is about 27db, a quiet street about 40db, a busy road is 69db and a hair dryer is 87db. Studies show that harmful effects begin at 53db dropping to 40db at night to avoid sleep disturbances. Though some research does show the risks start at an even lower threshold, and that  the risk of a heart attack increases 4.3% for every 10db above 35d, and cardiovascular disease risk increases 2.9% every 10 decibels above 35.

Given the risks, dangerous noise levels are far too common. London is particularly affected as one of the noisiest cities in Europe, with residents regularly exposed to 86db – far above the 53db threshold. With traffic noise, specifically noisy engines are particularly to blame, an RAC survey showed that 37% of Britons were regularly exposed to loud noises such as revving engines, rising to 47% in London. 

Thankfully, this evidence means the risks are already being reduced. Traffic is overwhelming the primary cause of urban noise pollution, and cars have been getting quieter thanks to regulation which has lowered maximum engine noise from 82 decibels in 1978 to 72 decibels in 2016 (100x quieter on the logarithmic scale) with a further tightening of standards to 68 decibels for new cars in 2026. With the rise of electric vehicles, traffic noise should be on its way to being a problem of the past.

But for a minority of motorists, excessive noise is the goal, either from modified ‘supercars’ or motorbikes. Residents measuring noise pollution on Streatham High Street found the legal noise limit was exceeded every 3 minutes, and vehicle noise complaints are the most common issue raised with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC). Modified vehicles are a growing menace on London’s roads. If it deafens you but you are 100 meters away or inside your home then it is very likely an illegal vehicle. So why are they tolerated?

Illegally loud vehicle noise is like speeding vehicles before the introduction of speed cameras. If you can’t prove on the spot that the law has been broken then how can the law be enforced? Fortunately, much like with speed cameras, technology has come to the rescue with new noise cameras. Noise cameras combine video footage with acoustic detection from several microphones to determine the decibel level of a passing vehicle, enabling enforcement action against illegally loud vehicles.

Led by Paris, city-planners are quickly acknowledging the power of noise cameras, with Paris beginning to roll them out in 2022, with fines starting in 2023. Others are quickly following, including Berlin, New York and Washington DC. The UK’s Department for Transport trialled them in 2022 with a recommendation that councils be allowed to deploy them to enforce noise pollution breaches.

But at present only a handful of noise cameras exist in the UK. RBKC has set up eight and there are a handful in other areas. The issue was raised in the London Assembly in 2023, but it is unclear whether there are any plans to deploy them more widely across the capital. Part of the problem is noise pollution has not been seen as a priority by politicians, but the more pressing issue is the economics of the cameras. While both speed and noise cameras issue fines of around £100, regulation around noise cameras still requires someone to manually check each penalty before it is issued. This labour cost means most councils will struggle to recover the initial outlay of £74k per noise camera for several years. One local politician I spoke to suggested a fine of closer to £400 would be both a more effective deterrent and allow quicker cost recovery.

One might think noise cameras are the next ULEZ or LTN – a policy that creates fierce divides among voters. In fact the opposite is true, - a survey by Which? showed 77% of the public were in favour of noise camera deployment in their area. Even among motorists, 57% polled by the RAC were in favour of noise cameras with only 22% opposed.

London’s boroughs and the Greater London Authority need to acknowledge the harm to our health and wellbeing posed by noise pollution. We have the technology, but it needs to be deployed across the city to protect schools, residents and workers. Central government in Westminster can also do their part by raising the cap on fines, and changing the rules to allow fines to be issued automatically without a human reviewing the footage (like speeding fines).

Cities should not be silent, as it’s the buzz and bustle of people living close together which makes them special. But we should discriminate between the background hum of people going about their lives, and the indulgence of a small minority of motorists harming the health and wellbeing of their neighbours.

Editor’s note:

We’ve been a bit quiet for the last month, but the writers are hard at work, and we have plenty more articles due out in the next few weeks. We are always keen to publish more pieces, and if you would like to write for us please email founders@greaterlondon.co. We are also excited to announce two events we have booked in central London for November and January, details out soon!

Brixton Market is for sale, again, reopening a debate about the role of markets in feeding our city. Markets are prototypical public spaces, essential for social and economic life throughout London. There is an outpouring of concern whenever important, historic markets are threatened with redevelopment. However, the sector has always been in flux. Individual markets may be under pressure, but the system is resilient and will continue bringing people and food together for years to come. 

From a bird's eye view, London is a tangled, illogical mess. It only makes sense from a chicken’s eye view. Walk along Poultry and head to Cornhill, the site of an ancient corn market. You are tracking the route of chickens being driven to market hundreds of years ago. Turn onto Cheapside or Eastcheap - bastardisations of ceap, the old English word for barter. Finish in Leadenhall Market, clambering into the basement of a barbershop. Here you can see the remains of the Roman Forum, built in 100 AD. London was a marketplace before it was a city. 

Since the Romans left, London’s leaders have had mixed attitudes to markets. On one hand, they conducted escalating amounts of informal, untaxed trade. Between 1851 and 1900, the number of street markets trebled (from 37 to 112). Whilst authorities continued to target unlicensed street vendors, they grudgingly noted their role in distributing affordable food to a surging population. 

“if the street markets were abolished to-day, the poor would certainly suffer” (LSE, 1932: 292)

Modern London eats 20 billion calories per day. Markets remain particularly important for low-income residents. You can access a market without spending anything, or find high-quality, culturally-appropriate food on a budget. They provide commercial and social hearts to neighbourhoods, while acting as a testing ground for food entrepreneurs. Pizza Pilgrims began on Berwick Street market, Rosa’s Thai grew out from Brick Lane, while Smokestak spun out from Kerb street market ‘Inkerbator’.

Tesco launched in 1919 as a moderately profitable stall in Well Street Market. In the early 2010’s recession, Well Street market closed. In 2016, it triumphantly reopened in a ceremony led by Sadiq Khan and an association of traders. Now, it is dwindling again. Stalls struggle to make sales in the shadow of a Tesco Metro supermarket that operates a few steps away from where it all started.

Markets in flux

London’s food markets are supported by the publicly funded London Markets Board (LMB). Traditional street markets have been recast as social infrastructure, receiving millions of pounds of direct investment. The number of farmers markets has quadrupled since the millennium, while private street food operators are springing up across the city. Borough Market has been trading for over 1,000 years. Queens Market has been protected from demolition by decades of community campaigning. On the surface, our markets seem like a uniquely resilient urban phenomena.

But the truth is, most markets disappear before you have had the chance to visit them. Like other retail businesses, they disproportionately fail in the first few years of operation. Unlike other retail businesses, they rely on vendors and customers meeting in the same place, at the same time. This makes them vulnerable to a death spiral. After a few slow days, vendors will seek new opportunities to sell their food. The loss of vendors makes the market less attractive to customers, subsequently making it a less attractive opportunity for vendors and so on. When markets disappear, they do so quietly. Academics and policy makers can only focus on the markets that survive long enough to be studied. Our oldest markets are oddities. To support future markets, we need to understand the factors which make a death spiral more likely. 

In 2022, I used guidebooks and public archives to map 94 markets, which had disappeared between 2006 and 2022. Over half of these are still erroneously displayed on the London Market Board’s map. The main finding was that London’s markets fail frequently. The median lifespan of failed markets was 1.4 years: 80% of failed markets lived less than 4 years of trading, while 1-in-4 failed in their first year. The spatial distribution of failed markets differs from those which have continued trading. 

The good news is that many other markets are thriving. There were 168 trading when I completed the research (October 2022). Since then, many will have begun their death spiral and some will have ceased trading entirely. In other locations, new markets will pop up and start weaving together vendors, customers and food in new ways. Even as London changes, it still needs to feed itself – and the data show that markets retain an important role in our shared urban life.

When we focus on old markets, it is natural to view the closure of a market as a loss of heritage - a tragedy, like misplacing Stonehenge. But if we accept that the market system has always been in flux, we can accept that less popular, less accessible markets will unravel and new ones will form. The overall trend is that the number of markets is growing. They currently employ around 3% of all retail workers in the capital.

Knot from here

London should think about its markets as a system of knots, tying together the trajectories of food and people, selling and buying, social and economic interactions. Borough market has become a Gordian Knot- so large and complex that it could only be untied through a dramatic severing action. Elephant and Castle is still reeling from the demolition of its market, which drew Latin American traders and customers from every corner of the city. When I visit the new markets springing up (e.g. East Finchley) I notice stalls who previously traded at markets which died. Threads snap and new knots can be tied elsewhere. 

Some knots are self-tightening. Under pressure, they inspire community activism and political campaigns, which make the market harder to unpick. Last time Brixton Market was purchased and scheduled for redevelopment, campaigners articulated its importance to the Afro-Caribbean Londoners who made homes after post-war migration. Whoever buys the site now, will buy it with Grade 2 listing and a community who are committed to buying and selling food there. 

Other markets are slipknots, designed to unravel. A pop-up can add some colour and economic activity to a meanwhile space, while exploiting the cheap rents that accompany short lease periods. Mercato Metropolitano has emerged as a key player in London’s food market sector, while occupying the site of a former paper factory, earmarked for over 500 new homes. 

As London’s streetscape changes, markets will shape these changes and keep food flowing. We live on streets shaped by the legacy of long-dead markets, and we rely on the survivors. But we should never forget that London’s market system has always evolved alongside the city; a cycle of failures and launches, outpacing academic research and official mapmaking. London’s governments shouldn’t cling to outdated maps – the best markets are tied into urban change, rising to the needs of the people who use them. London was a market before it was a city. Now it is a city where many markets are dying and many more are being created – a market of markets, as it always has been. Long may it continue.

One thing the Labour Government and their Conservative predecessors agree on is that London needs to build more housing. Michael Gove, while Levelling Up Secretary, wanted to raise London’s housing target to nearly 100,000 homes a year and his successor Anglea Rayner is planning on setting the target to just over 80,000 homes.

Yet over the past five years, London has built fewer than 38,000 each year, less than half of the new targets. It hasn’t built more than 50,000 since the 1930s. Clearly if London is going to meet its target of much needed homes, and see the economic windfall of doing so, we need to figure out where these new homes will go.

It’s a common misconception that London is completely built over. In fact, the London Plan, created by the Mayor, marks vast swaths of London as unsuitable for new homes. Much of this is justified, as you wouldn’t want to lose London’s fantastic parks or its historic charm. 

Yet there are two designations in the Plan where the arguments for effectively banning house building don’t stack up: well-connected green belt land and strategic industrial locations (SIL). 

• Green belt land makes up 22% of London, more than double the size of Bromley, London’s largest borough. 

• Just under 5% of London’s land is industrial, of which ⅔ is legally protected against building new homes under either SIL or Locally Significant Industrial Sites (LSIS) designations. 

While much of this land isn’t near existing transport links, there’s a surprisingly large amount that is well-connected and would be prime locations for building new homes.

Grey areas in the green belt

Within Greater London, there are currently 3,616 hectares of green belt land within a 10 minute walk of an existing tube, rail or tram station. That’s 25 times larger than Hyde Park!

Despite the name, London’s green belt is not idyllic natural countryside. It’s a mix of warehouses, monoculture golf courses, and agricultural fields. All of this land is within the M25, and none of it is in an area of natural beauty. Losing some of the land near stations wouldn’t be an environmental disaster, in fact it would cut pollution by letting more people walk from their home to public transport, rather than forcing them to drive everywhere.

If we just built at the density of terraced housing that’s enough land for 150,000 homes, or we could build 350,000 homes with a mix of flats and houses. That would deliver ¼ of Labour’s housing target for the entire Parliament, all built on land within walking distance of current stations in the city with the most unaffordable housing in the UK.

Designating areas right next to stations as green belt land is hugely inefficient — it pushes housing much further away from transport links than it needs to be. Take Crews Hill, a station in Enfield, for example. It is almost completely surrounded by green belt, despite being just 40 minutes on the train from the City. There are 191 hectares of land within an easy walk of the station where new housing is effectively banned. That’s the equivalent of 24 O2 arenas just around one station.

And this isn’t just a housing problem – it also means the stations are underused. An interesting quirk of the land around Crews Hill is that there is one rectangle missing that isn’t classified as green belt land. This is a housing development that first appears on Ordnance Survey maps in 1938, which is also when the green belt was first introduced in London. Unsurprisingly because so few people live near Crews Hill, it is the least used station of 18 within the borough of Enfield and within the 10 least used stations in all of London. When we have already built great transport infrastructure, we need to build homes within walking distance to make the most of the links.

It’s clear that all over London, green belt land which is very close to stations is poorly used. Just five minutes walk from Tottenham Hale station is a disused service station, where new homes can’t be built because it has perversely been classified as green belt. Right next to it, on non-green belt land, a development of 505 new homes is being built as part of a regeneration project of the area, clearly indicating the housing need that exists locally. 

Labour’s plans to build on parts of the green belt deemed ‘grey belt’ should allow for the development of this disused service station. But they’ll need to be bold with their plans to build, and make sure they reclassify land like this which is within walking distance of existing stations. This would have benefits for both London and for the rest of the country. One estimate suggested more than 2.1m new homes could be built near existing stations on the green belt within 45 minutes by train of five of Britain’s largest cities.

Nothing strategic about industrial land

Similar to green belt designations, Strategic Industrial Locations (SIL) designation also de facto bans the building of new homes. The policy is designed to meet London’s “industrial need,” in other words providing valuable real estate to businesses at below-market rates. This is a trade-off, meaning residential land values are three times higher on a per square metre basis than industrial land, allowing a potentially large uplift if the land was converted to housing.

In Greater London, there’s 2,096ha of SIL within walking distance of stations. That’s nearly double the size of Kensington and Chelsea or about the same size as the city of Westminster. There’s large amounts of land that new homes could be built on in the Docklands/Thames Gateway, Lea Valley, West London, and along the Wandle Valley in South London.

SIL land near stations would be enough for more than 100,000 new homes at just terraced house density, or with a mix of flats and houses, more than 250,000 homes. 

Yet this wouldn’t mean that there would be no industrial land for businesses. Land swaps could allow new opportunities for industries to be better located. Most SILs are currently located around rivers or canals because historically this was the easiest way to ship goods and power mills. 

The River Wandle, which flows from Carshalton and Croydon to the Thames at Wandsworth, used to have 68 mills along its length, which manufactured textiles, paper, and tobacco. These mills are long gone, but industry remains clustered on the same sites around the Wandle Valley. Now however, the warehouses have no need to be by the river or the Tramlink stops nearby. The Mayor should remove the SIL designation along the Wandle Valley and encourage industrial land swaps so the warehouses can be closer to the strategic road network, which is far more beneficial for modern industry than a historic riverside setting. With a regeneration project funded by the uplift from the new homes, Londoners could once again enjoy living near a restored River Wandle and the natural benefits of doing so.

Like the River Wandle, the Park Royal Industrial Area provides a great opportunity to build new homes on SIL land near public transport. Park Royal is so big that it could be an entirely new neighbourhood of London. It’s a vast collection of single-storey warehouses surrounded by 11 underground stations and the Acton Mainline Station on the Elizabeth line, but prevented from development into housing because of its SIL designation. Already well-connected, it will be even better suited to housing when the HS2 station at Old Oak Common opens nearby. 

Park Royal has 338 hectares of land within walking distance of a tube station, more than double the size of Hyde Park. If this was built to Parisian densities, there could be 135,000 new homes with easy access to good quality jobs. Park Royal could be a beautiful and well-connected new neighbourhood for Londoners, if the Mayor removed the SIL designation and let the existing Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation permit gentle-density building in the area.

Redesignating under-used green belt and SIL land near rail stations won’t fix everything with London’s housing market, and more work on estate renewal and suburban intensification should also happen. But it’s clear that a lot of London’s land is being poorly used because new homes are effectively banned there. And this has consequences – the failure to build more than 50,000 homes in a year since the 1930s has driven the median house price up to 15 times the median income in some boroughs, taking home ownership out of reach for too many Londoners. Building on well-connected green belt and SIL land is the best way to start fixing the capital’s housing shortage.

Community notes

• Great to see the development of a car park next to Cockfosters underground station has been authorised to go ahead, with 350 new homes.

• It’s a sad week for many Londoners reading the findings of the final report by the Grenfell Inquiry this week, and hopefully the start of justice for some who lost friends and loved ones. It is a good reason to re-up this piece from 2017 by Robert Colvile, on previous research which shows how few people really want to live in tower blocks, and how dangerous they are for worsening a wide range of people’s life outcomes. It’s a failure of our housing system that we’ve not been able to accommodate people living in these places better.

• Write for us: we’re amazed at the response we’ve had, and we’d like to start posting more than once a week. If you think of anything you want to write about London, please get in touch with us at founders@greaterlondon.co to discuss your idea.

We hope you have a great(er) week,

Joe and the GLP team

On my recent trip to San Francisco, the most incredible sight was no longer the Golden Gate Bridge or Alcatraz. It was the 300-strong fleet of driverless Waymo taxis, now omnipresent around the city. Riding in one is a mind bogglingly futuristic experience: watching the wheel turn with nobody there to turn it was one of the most incredible experiences of my life, defying all assumptions about how a car should work.

Sitting in one, the promise of self-driving cars is immediately clear. They're statistically much safer than traditional vehicles, and though prices currently match Uber's, they'll inevitably drop as technology gets cheaper. What's most remarkable is how few issues they're causing in San Francisco: despite some teething problems (and one headline-grabbing incident involving Waymo's competitor, Cruise), everything is going rather well.

For most of the ride I just sat there, gawping at how seamless the journey was. But I couldn’t help but think: why on earth don't we have these in London yet?

The answer is irritating: there is no good reason at all. In May, the UK passed its Automated Vehicles Act, which the government claimed would put self-driving vehicles on British roads by 2026. This timeline is already maddeningly slow — it would put the UK a full five years behind California — and it's probably still too optimistic. The Act, according to law firm CMS, simply provides a broad framework — detailed secondary legislation is needed before cars can actually be on roads. A consultation was supposed to start soon after the Act passed, but the election has likely delayed that. The new Department for Transport, at least, has remained silent on the topic.

Part of the problem appears to be the terrible advice given to the government. A September 2023 report from the House of Commons Transport Committee is infuriating reading, full of citations from people who don't seem to know what they're talking about. One academic claimed the biggest challenge was convincing the public that self-driving vehicles are safe, while another questioned demand for the technology. Yet the American public seem perfectly unbothered, having already logged more than 2 million paid trips with Waymo. Most egregiously, author Christian Wolmar told the committee that "little progress had been made in developing and introducing self-driving vehicles over the last decade" — at a time when Waymo vehicles had already driven one million miles without a safety driver, encountering no reported injuries and only two collisions.

Exacerbating the bad advice is that the country's self-driving cheerleaders aren't particularly adept advocates — because they're not very good at it. News articles often cite Oxbotica, Wayve, Nissan Leaf and FiveAI (since acquired by Bosch), all of which have run trials in the UK. Yet because these companies don't admit that their capabilities trail that of American market leaders, they instead make out that self-driving technology is further away than it is. Last year a Nissan boss said that “we probably have 80% of the capability, but that last 20% is going to take some time”. That may be true for Nissan, but it doesn't seem true for Waymo.

In a typical display of British exceptionalism, the media also likes to argue that there is something uniquely difficult about London. We're told that London's rainy weather is a problem, despite San Francisco having an almost identical amount of rainfall. The Guardian, meanwhile, argues that self-driving cars face challenges, “particularly on Britain's busy and often chaotic urban roads” — as if San Francisco's chaotic streets are a walk in the park!

All this is hurting London. Aside from robbing the public of an excellent experience, a lack of self-driving cars will soon become an embarrassment. Being an early adopter, meanwhile, would serve as an advertisement for the city – helping us live up to Sadiq Khan's claim that we're at the “forefront of [the technology] revolution”.

To bring London to San Francisco's level, three steps are crucial. First, the Department for Transport should expedite the secondary regulations. Second, these regulations should fast-track companies that have proven themselves abroad. We know Waymo is safe; it shouldn't face the same hurdles as companies who haven’t established the same track record.

Finally, the government should stop fretting about “public trust” or business models. That's for the companies to figure out. Put the vehicles on the road and let the public decide. If San Francisco's experience is any indication, they'll embrace them wholeheartedly.

Community notes:

• Swimming: Two weeks after GLP team member Harry Rushworth wrote about the importance of refurbishing London’s waterways for public use, we’re pleased to see that Greenland Dock in Surrey Quays will be open for public swimming until the 29th of October. 

• Building inspiration: And if you want proof that our vision for a London where we can build infrastructure is possible, you only need to look to the past. GLP team member Freddie Poser shared footage this week of the historic rebuild of Oxford Street Underground. Inspiring stuff!

• Noise cameras: Chris, a Greater Londoner in our community Whatsapp Group, shared this excellent summary piece on how we can use noise cameras in London to stop excessively loud traffic. 

• Events: we’re confirming two events for October and November, stay tuned for more information soon.

• Write for us: we’re amazed at the response we’ve had, and we’d like to start posting more than once a week. If you think of anything you want to write about London, please get in touch with us at founders@greaterlondon.co.

We hope you have a great(er) weekend!

Joe & the Greater London Project

London might be the focus of this newsletter, but in recent weeks even our eyes were on Paris as it hosted the Olympic Games. The River Seine was a surprising standout amongst the Olympic coverage, where in a break from tradition it played host to an innovative, if controversial, opening ceremony, and was home to the marathon swimming and triathlon events. For those who’ve visited Paris and witnessed the historically filthy Seine, this might come as a surprise, as the water quality had been so bad that public swimming and bathing has been banned for over a century.

Capital investment

Over the past two decades, Parisian authorities have invested billions of euros into transforming the city’s waterways and water systems, culminating in the Mayor publicly taking a dip in the Seine to prove the investment a success. Though unfortunately in the run up to the Olympics Paris did have an unprecedented rainfall surge, resulting in the triathlon event being pushed back by a few days.

The strategy for this transformation started with changing how water was managed in the city. Following the nationalisation of the local water network in 2009, the city invested in new more-efficient treatment plants, commenced a programme to seal pipe leaks across the network, and increased the provision of public fountains and public taps across the city. 

But the more challenging task was dealing with dirty water; sewage, storm water, and agricultural runoff. The largest investment has been in the creation of a new €1.4bn underground overflow tank that during surges, can hold dirty water for later treatment rather than discharging it into waterways like the Seine. Smaller interventions have also been carried out, with funds provided to the agricultural sector in the Greater Paris area to reduce runoff and pollution from entering waterways, and cleanup activities taking place in old basins and canals.

Though the Seine remains the biggest challenge, the changes are already seeing some success, with new public swimming pools and cordoned areas open in the Canal Saint Denise, Bassin de la Villette, and on limited stretches of the Seine.

These revitalised waterways are not just reducing pollution and enhancing biodiversity in Paris; they are also providing additional leisure facilities in one of the densest and most land-constrained cities in Europe, which is even more welcome given the increasing rate of heatwaves the city is due to experience.

Across the Channel

Like Paris, London is also threaded with waterways, basins, and canals. Though a limited few are still in active use, many just sit stagnant, a long cry from London’s time as the maritime capital of the world. And like Paris, many of these are filthy. Earlier this year, six miles of the Grand Union Canal were found to be contaminated with cooking oil. 

And in extreme cases, they can be deadly, with a death in Shadwell Basin in 2019, a popular (albeit illegal) bathing spot during hot spells. Such was the condition of Shadwell Basin that it took the police 16 hours to retrieve the body. In British tradition, the coroner, rather than demand the waterway be cleaned up, castigated the council for not having larger more visible signs warning people not to swim and threatening high fines.

Refreshing our waterways

Given the scale of London’s waterways, the prize of revitalising the old docks, basins, and canals across the city should not be underestimated, especially given Paris has a proven model that we can replicate. And we have our own model right here at home, with the popularity of the swimming ponds at Hampstead Heath. Alongside the benefits of a cleaner environment, more access to nature, and new public amenities, there’s the moral case of public safety. 

Several key investments have already been made to start this clean-up, such as the Thames Tideway Tunnel which will dramatically reduce storm overflows into the river. The Port of London Authority plans to build on this and clean up the Thames and its tributaries in the long term.

The benefits of cleaner waterways can be seen in Canary Wharf where the Middle Dock is being transformed through private investment from a lifeless basin into a new swimmable water with accessible decking, tiered waterside seating, and planted pontoons. 

We should be much more ambitious in how we manage our waterways and make the most of London’s maritime legacy. It should be a priority to clean up and remove debris from old docks like the Shadwell Basin. Some of our larger docks, like Greenland and the Royal Victoria are already used for water sports, but could benefit from public pontoons and decking, with areas cordoned for swimming.

Our canals and rivers need better management, targeted clean-ups, larger fines for dumping and fly-tipping, and campaigns on wastewater disposal. We also need to be more proactive in urban design and planning, with sustainable drainage and stormwater and sewage separation built as standard, rather than as an afterthought.

London’s waterways were once the envy of the world. With some TLC, they could be again!