perspective
Mark Tewdwr-Jones
Governing London:
World city,
local tensions
The institutions of change are constantly
undergoing reform and modernisation, in order
to set a strategic framework for growth and
investment. But choosing an appropriate governing
and institutional framework for London has always
been problematic. With the city serving as the
economic core of the UK’s global position and as
her capital city, London’s effects are felt over a
much wider territory than the administrative
boundary of London alone. Questions have been
addressed continually as to the nature and form of
the governance of London. Should London possess
a city-wide top-level authority? How should this
authority be established and over what
geographical area? What is the relationship
between the national government and London, and
between the South East region within which London
is situated and the city itself? And what is the
governing relationship between London and its
constituent boroughs?
London’s role as the capital city and as the location of central
government, global business interests and the financial markets,
significant arts and cultural facilities, a place of tourism, and as a
renowned worldwide centre for education, have all justified successive
governments’ desire to promote London and its wider region
economically, and to protect the city as a world urban power. A range
of interventions by government have demonstrated a commitment to
promote and strengthen London further over time in the face of
global competition and as the UK’s premier city. This is evidenced by
decisions to support massive regeneration schemes in and around the
capital such as the Thames Gateway, to invest in infrastructure and
transportation developments like the Channel Tunnel rail link, the
extension of Heathrow Airport, and Crossrail, to lead on the Olympic
Games 2012 bid, and to support the city financial hub of London as
a focal point for global business. The provision of highly specialist
support systems for international finance and business generates
economic growth that is in the interests of the UK’s economy.
This is London as the world city, a success story that is physically
bursting out of the urban core, forming new patterns of growth and
pressure around the capital, and causing externalities that Londoners
experience through high prices, housing and transport costs, and
social polarisation, and makes the city one of the world’s most
expensive cities to live and work within. House prices remain ten
times the average London salary and there remain difficulties to house
and accommodate key workers essential to deliver London’s services.
London’s population doubles during the working day as millions of
people commute into the city from a significantly wide and
Taken from the Summer 2009 edition of ‘palette’, UCL’s journal of sustainable cities
www.ucl.ac.uk/sustainable-cities
increasingly extensive catchment area. The infrastructure necessary to
support this growth and pressure remains archaic and so delay and
frustration have become part of the commuting experience for many.
London has also been a principal gateway for in-migration into the
country, a subject politically controversial, and one ever-folding to the
extent that in 2006, London plays host to 300 different nationalities
of people, speaking 200 different languages. The social and ethnic
mix of London today is in marked contrast to the London of 60 years
ago, when the politicians and planners first attempted to coordinate
change and bring about reconstruction in Patrick Abercrombie’s
Greater London Plan of 1944. It was a subject concerned with
questioning the ability of government to exercise authority over a
significant metropolitan territory, the meaning and extent of London
itself, and of those various populations and communities that make
up the city. These are exactly the same issues that London is facing
today: numerous and overlapping contentions for future direction
between competing interest groups.
These tensions are associated with divisions between advocates of
continuous growth for wider regional and national economic benefit,
and proponents of restraint and environmental – and to some extent
social – protection. They encompass not simply growth vs. protection
interests, but also national and local priorities, and inner London and
outer London contentions. These arguments are persistent, often
hostile, and are played out within a turbulent theatre of governance
which itself is often changing. Generating a vision, strategy and plan
to coordinate change in London is a task that politicians and policy
makers find incredibly difficult to undertake.
London, governmentally and institutionally, is in a continual state
of flux, searching for an institutional fix to govern and coordinate
intervention, while arguing about the delineation of power to
strategise the range of ongoing economic, social, and environmental
problems and bring about change. Since 2000, London has been
governed by an elected Mayor, within a broader governmental
framework provided by: central government; regional governing
structures; local municipalities; an elected London-wide Assembly;
a range of quasi-autonomous central government bodies; and ad hoc
partnerships. There has been little consensus by commentators in the
period since on the right relationship and degree of responsibilities
between these bodies, even though the Mayor was awarded further
powers in 2007, particularly in relation to strategic matters. The
growth of mayoral powers raises significant wider issues concerning
democratic accountability across the region, and serves to highlight
the ongoing and perhaps historic tensions that exist between the
agencies of change on the one hand, and different forms of
democracy and claims to democracy that are indecorously present in
London on the other.
The direct powers of the Mayor remain limited, when compared to
similar offices in other world cities, but he does perform an essential
catalytic and influencing role across agencies, performing an
ambassadorial role both outside the UK and inside government,
and with the business community. This new role has, in turn,
created a new form of integrated strategic planning at the London
metropolitan scale, with a commitment to planning, and a
determination for public, private and voluntary actors to enter into
partnerships to realise development. If anything, this should have
taken some of the political heat out of controversial large-scale
development projects. But the fact that both central and decentralised
government each operates at the Greater London level (through the
Government Office for London and the GLA) exacerbates the
landscape of governance and also leads to a confusion of roles at this
level. There remain huge questions about London’s capacity to deliver
and to galvanise political leadership across multiple competing
agencies, particularly in relation to issues such as planning, housing,
transport, and other public investments.
“There is no doubt that London – whether intentionally
or not – has been given a competitive edge over other
world cities by this institutional structure and flexible
responsive and partnership style of working”
These tensions have been ever-present in London for most of the last
120 years, despite government restructuring and questions over the
division of power and responsibilities. Despite or perhaps because of
this, the surprising point is that London nevertheless seems to have
been highly successful in its transition from a manufacturing to a
global–financial city and remains an attractive place to live and work
with new migrants from within and outside of the UK. This has been
achieved, perhaps in part, because the office-holder of London Mayor
has been instrumental in circumventing such a tightly-defined set of
parameters to nevertheless carve out a role for themselves that creates
achievements. With little in the way of direct responsibility for social
services and housing (unlike council leaders and directly-elected
mayors elsewhere) the London institutional framework has forced the
Mayor to concentrate specifically on economic development,
planning and transport policies while also engaging in the type of
networking, brokerage and partnership that New Labour requires in
the new elite governance structures.
The post-2007 powers vested in the Mayor provide a powerful but
potentially controversial set of tools for planning. The degree to
which they will be utilised will probably vary according to the
personal interests of the office holder. The relationship between the
Mayor and the boroughs to work the new powers is essential but
may lead to further, or perhaps that should be on-going, friction.
The unique combination of a strong institutional framework of
government, with a flexible and responsive form of working, has
enabled the bidding of projects (that can benefit the whole of
London) to be streamlined, and to be embedded within local
municipalities. There is no doubt that London – whether
intentionally or not – has been given a competitive edge over other
world cities by this institutional structure and flexible responsive
and partnership style of working, as the successful Olympic bid
illustrates. Between 2000 and 2008, London witnessed a form of
government working that owed its style and origins to New
Labour ideology, but also to the legacies of working within a
strategic vacuum in the 1980s and 1990s. This period saw a new
political commitment to strategic enabling, rather than strategic
governing, and was the breeding ground for innovation and
competitiveness across governance actors in London. Confidence
was created in collaborative working, but the style of London
politics and governance is already changing markedly. Party
politics has returned to the centre stage in London political
debates, and as the mayoral office has gained enhanced powers and
the office-holder cemented his position within the institutional
framework much more prominently, so older tensions and
conflicts have begun to emerge. The key question is whether the
legacies from the early 21st century experience of governing
London will deliver in the long term and provide social as well
as economic benefit.
Profile / Professor Mark Tewdwr-Jones
Before joining the UCL Bartlett School of Planning,
Mark held the posts of: Planning Assistant, South
Hams District Council; Lecturer, Department of City &
Regional Planning, Cardiff University; and Reader,
Department of Land Economy, University of
Aberdeen. He is co-author of ‘Decent Homes for All:
Planning’s Evolving Role in Housing Provision’ and
‘Shaping and Delivering Tomorrow’s Places: Effective
Practice in Spatial Planning’.
Mark’s research focuses on the politics and
governance of planning, including spatial planning,
urban and regional development, governance and
devolution, and certain substantive disciplines within
spatial governance including regional planning and
development, representations of planning and urban
life, economic and spatial governance, and the
relationship between housing and planning and
second homes in Europe. His current research is on:
the spirit and purpose of planning, including reforms
and modernisation of planning; the principles of
spatial planning; and media representations of
planning and planners.
Contact
Professor Mark Tewdwr-Jones
Professor of Spatial Planning & Governance and
Director of Research
UCL Bartlett School of Planning
Steering Committee Member
UCL Urban Laboratory
+44 (0)20 7679 4873
m.tewdwr-jones@ucl.ac.uk
Taken from the Summer 2009 edition of ‘palette’, UCL’s journal of sustainable cities
www.ucl.ac.uk/sustainable-cities