IMAGINING THE FUTURE CITY: LONDON 2062 www.shahrsazionline.com Edited by Sarah Bell and James Paskins SUSTAINABLE CITIES SERIES Imagining the Future City: London 2062 Edited by Sarah Bell and James Paskins www.shahrsazionline.com ]u[ ubiquity press London Published by Ubiquity Press Ltd. Gordon House 29 Gordon Square London WC1H 0PP www.ubiquitypress.com Text © The Authors 2013 First published 2013 Cover Illustrations by Edward Manley Front: ‘Clusters of Activity in Minicab Journeys across London’ Back: ‘Mapping Minicab Flows across London’ Printed in the UK by Lightning Source Ltd. ISBN (paperback): 978-1-909188-18-1 ISBN (EPUB): 978-1-909188-19-8 ISBN (PDF): 978-1-909188-20-4 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/bag This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. This licence allows for copying any part of the work for personal and commercial use, providing author attribution is clearly stated. Suggested citation: Bell, S and Paskins, J (eds.) 2013 Imagining the Future City: London 2062. London: Ubiquity Press. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/bag A minor correction was made to this book soon after publication. On p.77, the sentence “When refurbishing, covering up solid walls with insulation can significantly increase the available thermal mass…”, was amended to “When refurbishing, covering up solid walls with insulation can significantly decrease the available thermal mass…”. This error was present for a very short time and has been corrected in all formats of the publication. To read the online open access version of this book, either visit http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/bag or scan this QR code with your mobile device: www.shahrsazionline.com Contents Acknowledgements v Contributors vi Introduction (Sarah Bell, James Paskins, Joanna Wilson, Jennifer Johnson) 1 Connections 5 London’s population (Pablo Mateos) 7 Making London, through other cities (Jennifer Robinson) 23 Hinterlands (Brian Collins) 27 Smart London (Mike Batty, Ed Manley, Richard Milton, Jon Reades) 31 Flux and flow (Christine Hawley) 41 Planetary pressures (Jean Venables) 45 Infrastructure (Jeremy Watson) 49 Things 53 Transport, climate change and society (Robin Hickman) 55 Decentralising energy (Peter North) 63 Taking the carbon out of heat (Bob Fiddik) 67 Future-proofing London (Sofie Pelsmakers) 73 Water supply, drainage and floods (Sarah Bell) 85 Hydro-urban London (Tse-Hui Teh) 95 The future of food (Robert Biel) 97 Power 107 Governing a future London: the city of any dreams? (Rob Pearce and Mike Raco) 109 Let’s sing, not shop: an economist dreams of a sustainable city (David Fell) 119 Investing in futures (Hannah Dalgleish) 123 Singing the helplessness blues (Simon Cavanagh) 127 Rethinking London’s economy and economic future (Myfanwy Taylor) 131 Housing, inequality and a property-owning democracy in London (Michelle Hegarty) 137 Paranoia House (Arthur Kay) 139 Dreams 141 Scenarios and the future of London (Theodoros Semertzidis and James Paskins) 143 No limits to imagining London’s future (George Myerson and Yvonne Rydin) 155 A city-state? (Janice Morphet) 159 A despatch from the future (Matthew Gandy) 163 Reflections of a retiring bobby (Aiden Sidebottom and Justin Kurland) 167 London after London (Matthew Beaumont) 169 Conclusions (James Paskins and Sarah Bell) 173 Index 177 Images Shad Thames (Mark Tewdwr-Jones) Counter Street (James Paskins) Upper Thames Street (Mark Tewdwr-Jones) Computer (Sarah Bell) Wetland Public Park (Charlotte Reynolds) Recycling (Sarah Bell) Red Pin (Sarah Bell) Liverpool Street (Robin Hickman) View from St Paul’s (James Paskins) Housing and Urban Dairy Farm (Michael Pugh) Grey (Sarah Bell) Hydro-London (Tse-Hui Teh) Producing Food (Sarah Bell) Boarded-Up Building (James Paskins) Piccadilly Circus (James Paskins) London Underground (James Paskins) Surrey Row, Southwark (Mark Tewdwr-Jones) In Our Hands (Nicole Hunter) Paranoia House (Arthur Kay) River Thames (Mark Tewdwr-Jones) Oxford Street (James Paskins) New Change Shopping Centre and Offices (Mark Tewdwr-Jones) Lea Valley, Hackney (Matthew Gandy) Tube Poster (Liron Schur) www.shahrsazionline.com Acknowledgements This book owes much to the robust, interdisciplinary community of urban scholars, researchers, practitioners and activists at UCL and in our London networks. It is the outcome of the London 2062 project which ran at UCL between 2010 and 2012. Many of the participants in the London 2062 seminars, symposia and conversations have contributed chapters to the book, but many more people made presentations and took part in lively discussion and debate. The book as a whole and individual chapters have benefited as a result. Future of London was a key partner in a series of workshops looking at the future of London’s housing, economy, energy and transport. Their members and associates provided useful contri- butions to the seminars and the book, and were very valuable contributors to discussion of key issues, bringing on the ground experience to academic reflection and analysis. David Price, Vice-Provost for Research at UCL, instigated the London 2062 project as part of the Research Grand Challenge of Sustainable Cities. His vision was to bring the breadth of UCL’s urban research to bear on the future of our own city. The project received support from key staff in his office, including Marianne Knight, Ian Scott and Nicholas Tyndale. Mark Tewdwr-Jones was co-convenor of the London 2062 project until his move to Newcastle University in 2012, including early editorial work on the book. The project would not have been as well structured and informed, nor as much fun, without him. The team at Ubiquity Press have been patient and professional in encouraging and supporting this slightly quirky book. Rachel Cooper and Alvise Simondetti provided valuable feedback as peer reviewers of the draft manuscript. Their comments led to improvements the manuscript but they are not respon- sible for its residual flaws. Charlotte Barrow, Research Assistant in Sustainable Cities, was utterly invaluable in getting us over the line. Contributors Michael Batty CBE is Professor of Planning at UCL’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA). His current research is focused on new statistical models of cities with an emphasis on scaling, city size and morphology. He has written a series of books on these topics, the latest of which The New Science of Cities is to be published in late 2013 by MIT Press. He is Editor of the journal Environment and Planning B. He is Fellow of the Royal Society, the British Academy and the Royal Society of Arts. Matthew Beaumont is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at UCL, and a co-director of the Urban Laboratory. He is the author of Utopia Ltd.: Ideologies of Social Dreaming in Eng- land, 1870-1900 (2005) and The Spectre of Utopia: Utopian and Science Fictions at the Fin de Siècle (2012). Among other essay collections, he has co-edited Restless Cities (2010) with Gregory Dart. He is currently writing Nightwalking: A History. Sarah Bell is Senior Lecturer at UCL in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, and was co-convenor of the London 2062 Project. Her research interests lie in the relationships between engineering, technology and society as they impact on sustainability, par- ticularly in relation to water systems. She is a Chartered Engineer and holds a PhD in Sustainabil- ity and Technology Policy from Murdoch University, Western Australia. She is a co-director of the Urban Laboratory and previous co-director of the Environment Institute. Robert Biel teaches political ecology and urban agriculture at the UCL Development Planning Unit. In his published work, including his recent book The Entropy of Capitalism (2012), he applies general systems theory to an understanding of the current crisis and its possible solutions. He helped to run the ABUNDANCE programme introducing food growing in low income housing estates in partnership with Transition Town Brixton, and recently presented to Parliament on food futures. He participates in the allotment movement and actively experiments with sustain- able food-growing techniques. Simon Cavanagh is a Project Manager for a national housing charity. Working as part of their London Development team, he is currently leading on a multi-departmental approach to provide affordable homes in Westminster. Previous projects have included an award-winning regenera- tion of four estates in Hackney and the provision of sheltered housing in London and the South- Contributors vii East. As part of the charity’s commitment to younger people, he is keen to promote the benefits of working for a sector that will be key to ensuring London stays attainable for all sectors of society. Brian Collins CBE is Professor of Engineering Policy at UCL and Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Between 2006 and 2011 he was Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department for Transport (DfT), the Department for Business innovation and Skills (BIS) and Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR). He chaired the Engineering and Interde- pendency Expert Group for Infrastructure UK. He has served as Vice President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers and was Chairman of the Informatics Division. By presidential invitation, he is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, in addition to being a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. Hannah Dalgleish works at the London Borough of Hackney in the council’s Regeneration Deliv- ery team and is currently managing the delivery of a £5.3 million town centre regeneration pro- gramme in Hackney Central. David Fell is co-founder of the research and strategy consultancy Brook Lyndhurst. He is an economist with more than 25 years research, scenario-planning and strategy experience for clients in the government, private and not-for-profit sectors.