Conference Presentation, Panel
London Summit 2015 - City Life: New Designs for an Urban Planet (I)
Milken InstituteKevin Klowden, Claire Cockerton, James Goldsmith, Nicolaus Henke, Bridget Rosewell, Duncan Swinhoe
- Urban Economic Dominance: The top 600 cities, housing 1.5 billion people (expected to rise to 2 billion by 2007-2025), generate nearly 60% of global GDP.
- Growth Shifts: While megacities (10M+ population) are slowing, mid-sized cities (150,000–10 million) are projected to account for 45% of world growth between the last period and 2025.
- Demographic Strain: The average household size is declining, causing the number of households to grow faster than the population, which places significant strain on existing infrastructure.
- Healthcare Economic Crisis: In the US, the off-balance-sheet cost of Medicare is estimated at minus $71 trillion, exceeding the country's entire GDP of $52 trillion.
- City as Health Solution: Cities are identified as critical environments for implementing preventative health strategies, such as smoking cessation and promoting walkability, which address root causes rather than just treating symptoms.
- Case Study: Colac, Australia: This city of 150,000 successfully reduced childhood obesity through a community-wide initiative involving schools, adults, and policy changes, resulting in sustained health improvements for all children.
- London's Infrastructure Resilience: Joseph Bazalgette's Victorian sewer system, designed with double the required capacity after the "Great Stink," remains a critical example of infrastructure resilience, though London is now building new tunnels to supplement it.
- Innovation Clusters: Canary Wharf successfully repurposed a 1980s banking building into Level 39, a fintech accelerator that leveraged corporate procurement to fund and pilot 36 global startup solutions in six categories (e.g., transport, energy, waste).
- Real Estate Shortage: London faces a projected shortage of up to 10 million square feet of office space over the next four years, driven by business recovery and limited construction since the 2008 financial crisis.
- Talent Retention Strategies: Businesses are increasingly moving from core financial districts to "new villages" (e.g., King's Cross, Shoreditch) to attract talent, citing mixed-use environments and cultural diversity as key drivers.
- Lease Structure Mismatch: Tech companies with thin balance sheets require agility, but the current market trend forces them into rigid 15-year leases, creating a risk for their rapid growth or contraction cycles.
- Housing Supply Gap: London is currently building 20,000–25,000 housing units annually but requires a minimum of 40,000 to meet demand, with the mid-range family housing sector being the most difficult to deliver economically.
- Population Growth Forecasts: London's population is forecast to increase by 2 million by 2030, an increase equivalent to adding the entire city of Birmingham to the capital.
- Devolution as a Catalyst: The devolution of power is cited as essential for coordinated urban planning, with mayors enabling complex projects like Crossrail and regional transformations like those in Manchester.
- Third-Tier City Challenges: Cities like Middlesbrough and Hull face existential threats due to the decline of traditional industries (steel, shipbuilding), necessitating a shift from local rivalry to regional collaboration with larger hubs like Newcastle.
- Demographic Shifts: 30% of London's workforce is foreign-born, a contrast to other UK cities; however, there is a risk of "talent drain" where mobile young professionals leave cities entirely for other countries.
- Global Connectivity: Cities are increasingly bypassing national borders to form direct trade and investment links (e.g., London-New York), facilitated by global tech connectivity and the need to define unique selling propositions (USPs).
- Education-Industry Integration: Major educational institutions (Imperial, UCL, King's) are relocating campuses to West London and the Olympic Village to foster direct innovation pipelines, with businesses like Warwick Business School co-locating within city centers.
- Future of Housing: There is a growing trend toward micro-housing and Private Rented Sector (PRS) models for young professionals, though the "nuclear family" housing model remains a critical gap in the current supply chain.
- Public Transport vs. Car Dependency: Unlike Los Angeles, which struggles to retrofit a car-centric city, London's expansion was driven by rail, suggesting a return to walkable, high-speed rail-connected city regions as the sustainable model.
- Health Infrastructure Limitations: Traditional hospital-centric models are insufficient; forward-looking strategies involve "outbound medicine" (predictive data analysis) and "inbound" community interventions to manage chronic issues like Type 2 diabetes.
- Aging Population Risks: An aging population in cities with high youth emigration creates long-term care deficits, potentially requiring new models such as "Uber-style" community care networks for the elderly.