Governing cities, steering futures

In 1963, the late planner and urbanist Peter Hall imagined London’s future in the year 2000 and identified some of the implications of the city’s growth. One of his key recommendations was to replace the system of government for London with “a completely new type of regional government, as yet unknown in this country, and analogous to the status of an American state or German Land.” This, of course, never happened and London instead went through a cycle of implementing, abolishing and re-introducing a far less ambitious city-wide government.