London's West End

Last week, the report by the West End Commission, set up by Westminster City Council was launched. I was lucky enough to be involved in the fascinating process of discussions that led to this report. These revolved around the issue of how to ensure the future success of the West End and whether this future success was tied up with encouraging growth and development, dealing with the externalities of such growth and/or preserving what was already there and arguably made the area so distinctive. There was widespread agreement that the unique street morphology and historic buildings and places, the mix of land uses and social groups, the prevalence of SMES and the fine grain of the area were the things that made the West End what is was. So should preservation be the order of the day? Should existing clusters of land uses - as found in Cork Street and Savile Row - be specially protected?  Or would this inhibit future organic change that would provide the West End of the future? How to balance growth and conservation and yet work towards a low carbon future? The West End is though unusual across the UK. The report makes clear that is continues to experience economic success even during the recent downturns. Here growth-dependent planning can work if regulation is appropriately applied, if development is managed so that it does not kill off the distinctiveness of the West End and if some of the profits of development are used to support low carbon initiatives, place making and, above all, affordable housing provision. But we should not be deluded by this example; most places across the UK are not in this situation. And, if Larry Elliott in today's Guardian is correct, then the future may mean that the West End will be more and more atypical; see his article on 'What if, this time, the party is really over?' at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/larryelliott.

You can find details of the Commission and its report at http://www.westendcommission.com/ and I will be giving a talk on this at the Bartlett School of Planning, UCL at 5.30pm on Wed 8th May; see http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/planning/events/lps-rydin-may2013 for details.