If We Could Design London

If we could design London, we would create a network of meeting places which celebrate the city’s underused infrastructure and bring the people of London together. Where infrastructures meet, the potential for encounter exists. The city is where the people choose to go.

We will challenge preconceptions, shifting our mental map of London from the underground, to reveal a network of surface-level landscape superhighways blessed with sunlight and fresh air. Travel in London will never be the same. By re-imagining the map of overground London, new public spaces will be discovered, new adjacencies embraced, and new friendships made and maintained. By focusing on combining new and old infrastructures above ground we will invigorate derelict railway lines, carve super cycleways across the city, reinstate river and canal networks, and use enhanced technology to synchronise movement with ease. 

Enjoy the diversity of London; sunrise on Silvertown docks, lunchtime bingo at the Elephant and Castle, followed by windsurfing in Chingford or caving in Chislehurst, then dining on the best curry in Tooting. Alongside this urban strategy, we advocate micro-responsibility with rewards. City Hall and its constituents play Dragons’ Den, empowering real Londoners to transform their own neighbourhoods; the dynamism of Ideas on My Doorstep rather than the inertia of Not in My Back Yard, turning home-makers into heroes, entrepreneurs into environmentalists and park-keepers into popstars.