London 2062. UCL calls itself, or names itself, "London's global university". That might have

originally been a name coined to irritate the other University of London, however, I

think time has shown that [it] has a degree of resonance. And as a global university,

we have asked ourselves the question, what is the role of a leading university in the

world, and we feel that it's important that not only do we carry out world class research,

but that we actually integrate and cross tension the expertise we have in different disciplines

to try to find solutions to globally significant problems. So, as Vice-Provost for research,

my responsibility is to try to encourage colleagues to cross the traditional divide of different

disciplines to come up with solutions or possible solutions to major problems. And as a result,

what we've done at UCL is to create and define four grand challenges which focus on major

societal issues which the world faces. The first of these grand challenges is global

health: why is it that citizens of sub-saharan African countries are actually dying from

diseases that can be readily treated here at UCH or elsewhere? The second of our grand

challenges is sustainable cities, and that's born some of the activity that we'll talk

about tonight. Our third grand challenge is intercultural interaction, and our fourth

grand challenge is human wellbeing. Now these grand challenges are being evolved over the

last couple of years and continue to do so but tonight we are focusing on the cities

problem, and in the sustainable cities equation and studies that we've been carrying out at

UCL focused on a variety of things, for instance, recently in May we published a commission

with the Lancet on 'healthy cities' -- what is it that one has to do to ensure that cities

around the world are healthy places and engender healthy lives for their citizens? But tonight

we focus on the analysis of colleagues at UCL and outside UCL that have been working

in the last year or so on aspects related to London and the future of London. And we

titled that project 'London 2062', a fifty-year view forward as to what are the challenges,

what are the issues that this wonderful metropolitan city face, and how is it that we could start

thinking now in a way that will avoid and alleviate some of the challenges and the negatives

which could occur, and obviously, what is it that we need to do to conserve the positive

features of London. And I think in the summer, we've all seen some of the fabulous things

that bring London to life and what makes London a special place, and I think it's really exciting

to talk about tonight how it is we can capture, grow that and actually have this long legacy

fifty years after the Olympics. So I'm delighted this evening that we have a number of colleagues

who have been involved with the thinking and the development of this analysis, and we'll

be hearing from three of them this evening. Later on in the year, or maybe at the beginning

of 2013, we will be publishing a book which captures the ideas of a number of other colleagues

and which will be launching a little bit later on there. But I'd like to start this evening,

therefore, by asking my three colleagues to come and give some of their thoughts about

some of the issues, and after they've spoken, we'll be able to have a dialogue and discussion

with questions from the audience. So to start this evening, I'd like to introduce to you

Ben Harrison, who is the Director of Future of London, and has been involved in the discussions

throughout the last year or so, and is going to give us a synoptic overview of some of

the thinking which is being developed. So, Ben, can I pass it over to you? >>[Applause]

>>[Harrison] Can I just start by asking if you can all hear me all right? Is the mic

okay? It sounds like it is. Excellent. Thank you very much David and good evening ladies

and gentlemen. Before I start with what I have prepared to say tonight, I just also

want to thank Sarah Bell, Mark Tudor Jones, James Paskins and Ian Scott from UCL for offering

the invitation to Future of London to come and get involved in this programme of work.

It's been a fantastically interesting one and we specifically were involved in running

a series of seminars at the start of this year looking at a number of different related

disciplines and policy areas and I'm going to say a bit more about that in a moment.

Before I do that, though, I just want to take the opportunity to give a bit of an introduction

to Future of London. We're a relatively young organisation and I'm conscious that our involvement

in this year may very well be the first time that you come across us as an organisation.

So, I'll do a brief run through of that, and then following that, I will give a brief overview,

as David mentioned, of some of the areas where we were able to find that consensus from our

events and the contributions that were made within them and then some key points of difference

going forward about London's future over the next 50 years. So, to begin, what is Future

of London? Well, as our strapline says, we're an independent, not for profit, policy network

focused on the big challenges facing regeneration, housing and development practitioners in London.

What does that mean specifically? Well, we are a membership organisation bringing together

London boroughs, registered providers and housing associations, the GLA, TFL and overall

we have three main programs of activity. The first is focused on developing the next generation

of regeneration leaders in London. We run a training and development program called

The Future London Leaders and that identifies individuals whom across our membership who

tend to be between five an seven years in their career and provides a range of development

and networking opportunities for them. We're into the fourth round of that program. It's

been hugely successful and is a very popular part of our program, and we're about to launch

the next round next month. We also offer our members various forums to share best practice

and innovative thinking across the London Practitioner Network. We're very conscious

that despite being a global city, actually a lot of what goes on in London can be surprisingly

parochial and building relationships across borough boundaries and between organisations

is something which we believe is absolutely vital if we're going to learn the lessons

from the various programs of regeneration underway across the capital. And finally,

we also produce various outputs from a research and policy point of view but really with a

specific focus on pieces of work that will be of practical assistance and are really

focused on delivery. Hopefully you've seen a few copies of reports that we've launched

over the past 12 months this evening. They've tended to focus on the implementation of various

pieces of government legislation, most notably the green deal, and how that can work in London,

and we've just published a report recently on flows of overseas investment into the London

property market, what that's doing to house prices and what it means going forward for

housing policy. So, to deliver this work we engage in a range of partnerships, working

with a diverse groups of organisations from UCL to the Joseph Rowntree Organisation, major

house builders and big city law firms to deliver a vibrant program as I say with a number of

different component parts. Our membership for 2012 is here. We're just about finalised

that for 2013, and if you are interested in getting involved in our network, then please

do visit our website, it's futureoflondon.org.uk. And there's various different ways that you

can become individually involved or as an organisation. So, that's the mini sales pitch

over. Turning to think about London 2062 and the seminar series that we collaborated with

Sarah, Mark and colleagues on in the spring of this year. The seminar series itself consisted

of four sessions. We welcomed a total of over 100 participants, drawn both from the academic

community but also from our practitioner network. Each was designed to explore a specific topic,

energy housing, transport and the economy, looking ahead over a 50 year timeline, and

alongside these events you'll have no doubt seen that colleagues at UCL and ourselves

have published a range of think pieces, articles and essays and as David has mentioned there

is a more substantial output coming next year. In terms of the sessions themselves and what

we -- the themes that emerged from them were, clearly we set our contributors a very large

and probably unfair challenge, to conceive of what London is going to be like over a

50 year timeline. It's not a usual task that you present to people that you're inviting

to come and speak at an event. And I guess perhaps reflecting the pre-Olympic double

dip recession gloom that pervaded over London at that time, it's fair to say that we heard

some fairly terrifying projections of what London's going to like in 50 years time: overcrowded

and bursting at the seams, subject to the mal-effect of large temperature increases

and rising sea levels as a result of global climate change, more unequal than ever and

with an economy unable to compete with rising global megacities in the east. Of course,

others were simply holding out the hope that the hoverboards that we were promised by the

year 2000 would have materialised by then. By and large, it was a pessimistic set of

contributions that we received from a number of individuals. Having said that, though,

there were definite areas of consensus and disagreement both between and within the practitioner

and academic groups that we talked to and who presented to us. And I'd just now like

to highlight a few of these, perhaps to inform some of the discussion that we're going to

have later on in the evening. So, first of all, to look at where there was a degree of

consensus amongst our contributors. When taking into account a rather unscientific show of

hands in the seminar looking at specifically the economy, but also taken with the general

nature and tone of contributions throughout the series, it seemed pretty clear that most

people are of the view that London will continue to be an unequal place and actually will become

more unequal over the next 50 years as things stand. Many were concerned about a gap between

those at the bottom and the top of the income scales continuing to increase, particularly

a disparity between inner and outer London also becoming wider. Secondly, when considering

energy policy, all four of our sector specialists highlighted the Danish model of decentralised

energy as a key example that London should look to follow in the years ahead, and with

colleagues both within the GLI and in our borough members already pursuing schemes in

this regard, there was certainly some degree of optimism that progress in this area will

be possible and that this will be a very important component part of London meeting its carbon

reduction commitment by 2062. Third, the successful delivery of Crossrail is clearly vital to

the development of London. But we should also be actively considering what comes next in

terms of major investment in London's transport, and there was a sense that perhaps more thought

needs to be given to the period between 2020 and 2040 in terms of what that investment's

going to look like and how transport can meet the needs of a changing London economy over

that time. And fourth and finally, it was widely recognised that tough decisions are

going to be needed to improve London's energy efficiency and reduce its carbon output of

its built environment. Specific policy initiatives like the green deal are thought to be good

places to start but clearly there are significant financial and delivery hurdles that need to

be cleared if London is to meet, if these schemes are to be widely taken up and their

benefits felt across London, and given that the proportion of the built environment that

is still goign to be in use in London in 50 years time is so high, it really does need

to be a major priority for London in the years ahead. And then turning to some of the areas

where there was more disagreement or uncertainty around where London will be in the next 50

years: much discussion was had over whether we need a new economic model in light of the

recent financial crisis and whether the old way of assessing and looking at London's economy

was somehow no longer fit for purpose. On the other hand, many of our contributors that

actually to throw the baby out with the bathwater and not play to London's existing strengths

would be a huge mistake, and I think finding a resolution within those two points of view

was probably beyond the two hours that we had to debate it, but it's something which

is going to be developing over the coming years, and really, I think, a key point of

focus for Future of London going forward is thinking well, if we are serious about developing

a more poli-centric London economy with a diverse set of sectors stretching beyond financial

services by taking advantage of the opportunities of the digital economy, what does that really

look like, and what as practitioners do we need to do to achieve it? Secondly, a clear

area of uncertainty was around what if any new powers London should seek from central

government? Clearly we have in power at the moment a government that is serious about

devolving power to a local area since the events were held, we've obviously seen city

deals and a significant devolution of power to Leeds and Manchester and Newcastle and

the local deals it's true did bring additional powers to the mayorality in London and increased

the scope of mayoral involvement in housing development and other areas. But I think a

key question for the next two to three years will really be well, should London be looking

for a new settlement to deliver growth in the period ahead, and is it right that London,

for instance, takes control fully of the business rate, which has been long on the agenda or

other pot of money that could potentially be used to boost investment in the capital,

not without controversy, not without extremely complicated areas, but nevertheless, with

Boris Johnson probably never being more powerful than he is right now, you would imagine right

now that the scope for him to go back to David Cameron and demand a better settlement for

London will be one to look out for. Thirdly, and perhaps most controversially of all, the

future of aviation policy in London was a big feature of our transport session. Do we

expand our existing airport transport incrementally, build a new airport, essentially for Europe

in the Thames Estuary, or actually do nothing and take the view that London's priorities

should lie elsewhere and that the costs of increasing air travel in London to perhaps

some of our other aims in the capital would be too great and therefore not worth doing.

Clearly, it's a hot topic politically, so hot in fact that it's been well and truly