But he got terribly intemperate when challenged, and he does have a temper on him. And when riots broke out in the capital in August , he badly misjudged the public mood. Johnson had been on holiday in Canada with his family when the unrest began and initially refused to return he later told colleagues his wife, Marina Wheeler, was too short to drive their rented Winnebago.
But Boris at his worst is where he suddenly gets interested and distracted by something bright and shiny. And it is those shiny, personally driven projects about which Johnson was so enthusiastic that have arguably come to define his mayoralty, despite some achievements for which even his political foes give him credit, such as pushing through segregated cycle lanes and delivering the bike-hire scheme that had been developed under Livingstone.
Asked if he had any regrets, Johnson — whose campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this article — said he would have built it faster. So what did he actually want to achieve as mayor? In a curious way, the more he is subjected to criticism now, the more he will be seen to do well. Boris Johnson waves the Olympic flag during the handover ceremony at the Games in Beijing, China.
Illustration: Guardian Design. As he explained to me, his task was straightforward: "I do think this is the best city in the world, the most diverse and tolerant. We just need to invest enough to modernise infrastructure. COP Boris Johnson urges countries to 'pull out all the stops' to secure 1. Cambo oil field owner reveals no need to pay tax on controversial project 'for many years' due to 'attractive' UK rules.
Mr Livingstone was re-elected for a second term. But another big personality defeated his bid for a third term. In fact Mr Johnson enjoyed a golden inheritance from his predecessor. Mr Livingstone set up the scheme which became known as Boris Bikes. Mr Johnson won a second term and continued to advocate spending cash on eye-catching schemes. He installed a cable car over the Thames but two other big projects - the Garden Bridge and so-called Boris Island Airport - came to nothing. Mr Johnson moved back to parliament.
Mr Johnson has accused him of bankrupting Transport for London. So, as a result of the ideology of non-intervention and institutional fragmentation, very little strategic planning took place in the years following the abolition of the GLC.
Increasing concern was expressed at the lack of overall vision, the inability to co-ordinate transport and development, as in Canary Wharf, and poor city leadership 5.
The establishment of the GLC had been largely a technocratic reform searching for greater administrative efficiency while its abolition had been a politically motivated action based upon ideology. The institutional changes during the s can be said to have been the first to respond to the pressures of economic globalisation and inter-city competition. The private sector played a significant role in pushing these institutional changes forward. These pressures of globalisation have dominated the policy agenda ever since.
During this period when London had no overall government, the City Corporation was active in commissioning reports and funding promotional bodies that were concerned with the competitiveness of London.
Studies were undertaken on London as a World City and these concluded that London was at a disadvantage in not having a single voice to promote the city e. Llewelyn Davies, 6. Traditionally business in London had been organised under two main umbrella bodies, the London branch of the Confederation of British Industry which represented manufacturing industry but was becoming more broadly based, and the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry with a tradition of representing retail and small traders.
It is interesting to note that the principal sponsors of this new body were companies that could be described as linked to the new global economy — for example, British Airways, the Airport Authority, British Telecommunications, the internationally oriented business service and financial firms, and international developers involved in the biggest development projects in the capital for details see Thornley et al, 8.
The lack of a metropolitan authority and a strategic planning approach was causing problems for London in the new era of globalisation and inter-city competition.
Central government began to respond by beefing up its Strategic Guidance for London and setting up collaboration with bodies such as London First to think about a vision. However, the resultant strategic planning was weak and disjointed. At this point a new national government came into power, led by New Labour and Tony Blair. The new government solution to the London strategic deficit was to set up a new authority led by a directly elected mayor.
This was the first time Britain had had a Mayor who was directly elected by the people and the idea was that this would give the incumbent greater political stature and the ability to impose leadership. The Act specifies eight of these covering, economic development, transport, bio-diversity, noise, waste management, air quality, culture and spatial development.
This last strategy, the Spatial Development Strategy SDS , subsequently called the London Plan, is a strategic land use plan that is required to draw together and co-ordinate all other strategies. It is also the only one to have statutory, or quasi-legal, status. There are strict procedures that have to be adopted in its formulation, including public involvement through an Examination in Public, and once adopted it has to be followed by the second tier boroughs in the production of their own plans and granting of planning permissions.
We will be focussing on this London Plan as this plan sets out the Spatial Development Strategy for London and deals with matters that are of strategic importance to Greater London. We have selected this as our case for two primary reasons. Secondly, sustainable development is, by its very nature, a policy area that takes strategic vision with its triumvirate balancing of economy, social equity and environment. As described above, the GLA arose as a response to lack of leadership, vision and co-ordination in the approach to the governance and planning of London.
Our contention is that under Livingstone a positive step was taken to remedying these former problems but that there is a danger that under Johnson this step has been transformed into a shuffle.
The London Plan took a while longer to produce, as it is required to go through a statutory procedure. It was eventually completed in The Plan said that London had two strategic choices. It could rein back its economic and population growth through policies of dispersal, like those that took place in the decades after the second world-war. Alternatively it could accept the processes of economic and population growth, re-centralise, and create the adequate infrastructure to cope with the pressure.
The growth would then help to create the improvements in services and transport the city needed. This second option was the one adopted. The role of the Plan was therefore to ensure that the Mayor could provide the facilities needed for the world city growth strategy, and to formulate policies to deal with the pressures that this increase in economic activity and population created.
Thus policies followed that covered economic, social and environmental issues; growth, equity and sustainability. By doing this Livingstone created an explicitly spatial development strategy for sustainability that promised to intensify development in key areas that had good public infrastructure and to extend development eastward into the Thames Gateway.
This meant that the Plan represented a polycentric development strategy, which called for the interconnection of various parts of London in order to utilise land and other resources effectively Holman, Livingstone also strengthened the role sustainability played in the Plan through the creation of thirteen sustainability criteria Policy 2A.
Reflecting on these criteria 12 we see a strong emphasis on the use of previously developed land; the favouring of polycentric development in areas with good access to public transport, employment, shops, housing and infrastructure; the avoidance and mitigation of risk primarily flooding ; the assessment of developmental impacts on natural, cultural and human resources; and finally the contribution mixed-use developments might make in community building. These criteria were created to guide and shape the statutory development frameworks produced by the lower tiers of London government i.
By instructing the lower tiers of government to formulate their development documents based upon, not only the London Plan but also and more specifically the sustainability criteria, we can see the Plan as a centralising document. It can been seen as another process through which the Mayor can gain control and influence policy on both a London wide scale but also more locally.
This type of oversight can be seen not only in the sustainability criteria mentioned here but also in the numerous targets, criteria and policies also adopted in the plan dealing with housing, density, parking and tall buildings.
By way of illustration of the language used in the London Plan with respect of the boroughs, the Plan uses phrases like the boroughs should or the boroughs will at least times. The time was looking right for regime change. There were a number of factors that led to his demise. The Labour Party nationally was very unpopular, some people just felt that it would be interesting to have a change after eight years with Ken, and there was a backlash from suburban residents.
The newspaper conducted a very vociferous and personal campaign against him.
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