Changing London. David Robinson
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our conversations and are the load-bearing poles of a big and popular tent. Within this framework we imagine a mayor with three distinct approaches to their work.
First, they would inquire and listen, inspire and explain, convene and provoke, engage and collaborate.
Second, they would prioritise a little light institution building. Ideas need vehicles to carry them forward, and we’re not looking for short-term projects but serious commitments with enough investment to embed them in the landscape of our lives.
Third, they wouldn’t stop talking about the big vision – the best place in the world to grow up, a fair city or a healthy one, these are big visions – but nor would they miss the strategic power of the local initiatives that can catalyse wider change. There are times when social acupuncture can be more effective than monolithic bureaucracy.
This book isn’t meant to offer a step-by-step political programme for the next mayor any more than a rough guide for travellers offers a coherent itinerary for a lengthy expedition. It is a set of practical suggestions rooted in real-life experience. We have imagined London as a great place to grow up, as a neighbourly community where everybody matters, as a just city where power, wealth and opportunity are fairly shared, and as a healthy place where sickness is tackled at source. And we have imagined how we might achieve the changes we are calling for in a deeper and revitalised democracy.
Of course these approaches aren’t mutually exclusive. A good place to grow up would also be safe and healthy, a fair city would also look after its children, ensuring that none are left behind, and a place where neighbourhoods thrive would be fertile ground for strong local democracy and civic engagement. The sum of the parts, a clutch of modest ideas and a few big ones, would change for good the political narrative in London and transform our capital city.
A Great Place to Grow Up
In the next chapter we imagine how the next mayor might make London the best place on earth to raise a child. We suggest a set of six rights promised to every London child, including a fun and friendly neighbourhood, the extra help whatever it takes, and the first steps into a good career. Ideas include the introduction of 10,000 Play Streets, building on a ‘presumption of consent’, a Cultural Guarantee of the things we will have experienced by the time we leave school, an overarching strategy for the elimination of illiteracy, an annual ‘Have-a-Go Festival’ and a London Child Trust Fund so that all enter adulthood with some savings to their name.
A City Where Neighbourhoods Thrive and Everybody Matters
In Chapter 3 we reflect on how the places where we live, and the relationships within those places, shape the quality of our lives, and we imagine a city where neighbourhoods thrive and everybody feels important. Ideas include using guidance and regulation to design social connection into the places where we live, not design it out; introducing the Danish concept of a ‘Right to Space’ for community activities and adopting a ‘social acupuncture’ approach to seeding new projects; driving the colocation of local services with a London Register of Public Assets; establishing a Co-Production Academy; and openly measuring social progress with a London Index.
A Fair City
In our fourth chapter we tackle fairness and equality and imagine a city where power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many not the few. Here we suggest four guiding principles.
On poverty: having enough to live on should be an entitlement in a rich city, not a privilege.
On wealth: remuneration distorted beyond the dreams of avarice is no more useful here and no more welcome than abject poverty.
On business: businesses of good character are defined not by shareholder return or contribution to GDP but by the difference they make to the lives of Londoners.
And on housing: houses in London are for people to live in and there must be enough for everyone. They should no longer be treated as investment vehicles.
Ideas include a Mayor’s Share in London’s biggest businesses, a London Fair Pay Commission, a Mayor’s Pledge adopted by ‘businesses of good character’ to pay fair wages and fair taxes, and – like the mayors of Nantes and Brussels – active mayoral support for a tax on financial transactions.
A Healthy City
We look at a city that prioritised the health of its citizens and imagine the programme of a mayor tackling sickness at source in Chapter 5. To promote healthy communities he or she should tackle inequality, clean the air, make it easier and safer to cycle and walk, outlaw smoking in parks, and ban fast food outlets near schools. Tackling mental health stigma, introducing traffic lights on restaurant food and learning about first aid, cancer, diabetes and how to keep fit in an annual Save Ourselves Week would ensure that we all have the knowledge to stay healthy.
A Deeper Democracy
Chapter 6 takes a different approach. Whilst earlier chapters have been about what the mayor might do, this one focuses on how they might do it. It’s about effective leadership and retooling democracy in London for the twenty-first century. ‘Ideas for London’ would be the new permanent City Hall agency charged with seeking out and developing new ideas. An annual April Vote would see Londoners take part in a referendum on a big issue facing the city. Citizens budgets would give us a say over how our money is spent, and a Table for London and a London Calendar would provide the infrastructure around which we settle the really difficult issues, decide on priorities and work together on improving the city we share.
A Spirit of Can Do
If there was a single continuous thread in the many and diverse contributions to Changing London, it was a spirit of can do. We don’t like everything we see but we do think change is possible.
We are bewildered and even alienated by the vision often repeated by mayoral wannabes – ‘the world’s most competitive city’ – partly because, as one contributor at our open meeting pointed out, it raises the question: competitive at what? Ballroom dancing, quiz nights, drinking games? But mainly because it has so little resonance with the average Londoner. Although 77 per cent of London residents are proud to live here only 17 per cent believe that they benefit from the building development in the capital.21 Big-shot London – big offices, big salaries, big business – is relatively peripheral to most of us, and 75 per cent say that there are a lot of things that they would like to do in London but simply cannot afford.21
A winning candidate would understand that reality, and develop a promise for the next mayoral term that owed less to the Westminster playbook and more to the people of London. We have ideas, we believe they are practical and we think they would reach the parts of the electorate that others never reach
As Boris Johnson is now stepping down and Ken Livingstone isn’t running again, the next mayoral election will be contested by first-timers. They have the chance to be something different, to stand for something more. It is very likely that they will be well-known, experienced, national politicians with a reputation to think about. Big ships are safest close to port but it isn’t what they are built for. Though caution might be understandable it would also be a wasted opportunity, for London and for politics.
One of west London’s most distinguished residents, T. S. Eliot, once asked:22
When the Stranger says:
‘What is the meaning of this city?
Do you huddle close together because you love each other?’ What will you answer? ‘We all dwell together To make money from each other’? or ‘This is a community’?
It’s not a simple either/or – choices in government rarely are – but it is about priorities, and contributors to Changing London were unequivocal: we want candidates who know what matters most, leaders who will listen to Londoners and, in 2016, a mayor who will embrace fresh ideas and a new approach to politics.
2. A Great Place to Grow Up
‘If we can lead in finance (or law or fashion or Olympic Games) it is neither illogical nor grandiose to demand of our mayor that this great world city leads the globe in nurturing our young. It would require vaunting, breath-taking, ridicule-risking