Favorite for London Mayoral Candidate wants to Double Size of London | Decision Making

As celeb is standing it seems Andrew Boff might finally get it

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Many of the city’s transport, housing, and economic issues impact upon areas situated outside of Greater London, and millions commute in and out of the city every week. Indeed, London’s travel-to-work area extends well beyond the city’s boundaries and is almost equal to London in size. There are whole swathes of the Home Counties where more people work in London then in their home county, as the below map clearly highlights:

Residents of the Home Counties have very little say over the governance of London or the policy decisions that have a great impact upon their regions. The city limits of London should be extended to include its travel-to-work area. This would give people in the wider travel-to-work area a voice in the governance of London and help spread the proceeds of growth throughout the South East.

London’s current borders were drawn over 60 years ago and are clearly no longer fit for purpose. In 1957, the then Prime Minister Harold Macmillan established the Herbert Commission. A key plank of the Commission’s proposals was that a ‘Greater London’ should be established to approximate what was then London’s travel-to-work area. The Commission was quick to highlight that the complex and parochial set of institutions that grew out of London’s medieval core had become redundant. Modern London is now at a similar juncture.

Extending London’s borders to include the commuter belt could create a Southern Powerhouse worth £500 billion, which would make it the world’s third largest city economy.

Also of interest

#CrowdedHouses
The are 350,000 young people being brought up in overcrowded conditions in London. This creates enormous obstacles to their educational and social development, as well as leading to poorer health outcomes. Despite knowing this, Mayor Khan has abandoned targets for larger family-sized homes. It is nothing short of a disgrace. I will restore and enhance those targets.

#BedroomsNotDoors
Current housing targets count front doors. This creates incentives to build smaller homes when London, overwhelmingly, needs large ones. Housing targets will be expressed as numbers of bedrooms, not front doors.

#NoPoorDoors
The social divisions in London are not helped by new developments that avoid mixing tenures by having separate entrance doors for the wealthy and the poor. Under a Boff mayoralty, the London Plan will reject mixed tenure developments that segregate social classes.

#NoMoreTowerBlocks
Every new tower block is a symbol of how our city has contempt for the needs of its citizens. More traditional and popular development typologies, such as suggest by Create Streets and others, will be favoured and the word “beauty” will be brought into the London Plan. Apart from in five established high-rise areas, no new residential development will exceed six storeys.