London 2001

Twenty-five years ago Peter Hall published London 2000, a bold and imaginative book in which he argued for a new concept of strategic planning for London and its surrounding region. Just as the author predicted, the region has continued to grow and spread, so that it now extends over the whole of South-East England and even some way beyond. London 2001 is a completely new sequel to the original book and it attempts to do for the London of the late 1980s what its predecessor did for the London of the early 1960s. The 1963 book, widely reviewed and acclaimed, had a powerful catalytic effect. In quick succession there followed three major official studies; together they created a blueprint for just the multi-centred city-region that Hall had envisaged. But thence, regional planning went into retreat, and by 1983 a Thatcher government could actually condemn it as a discredited notion of the 1960s. London 2001 asks what went wrong with the dream of the 1960s. It argues that the need for a strategic plan is just as urgent as it was then: perhaps more so. It systematically surveys the major planning problems of this, Britain's most prosperous region: problems of congestion and overheating in some parts, coupled with economic collapse and deprivation in others. And it concludes with an imaginative vision of what the region, with proper strategic guidance, could become by the start of the twenty-first century. Hall argues that history is about to repeat itself: just as in the early 1960s, regional planning, officially pronounced dead, is about to rise from the grave. The problems have never gone away and, as the newspapers and television remind us every day, they are looming ever larger. London 2001 will surely play a crucial role in the rebirth, just as London 2000 did a quarter-century ago.