London City Local Plan Analysis

London City Local Plan Analysis

            Local Plans sets out the tactical development priorities of a location and covers housing, public, private and commercial development that includes transport infrastructure and local environmental protection. This means that a local plan system must be genuinely plan-led. A concise and up to date plan is expected to have a positive vision for the future of any particular area and a structure of how to deal with the issue of housing needs, economic environment and social priorities. These plans contain a series of well-articulated guidance on what the development will involve and will not permit within a specified area. In order to understand more about local plans, this paper aims to conduct an in-depth analysis of the City of London local plan.

The city of London local plan provides a projected view for the future development of the City of London by the year 2036. That is its setting out clearly the kind of developments to be undertaken by City Corporation and where. Every local leadership in England is expected to produce a plan that will have general conformity with the mayor’s proposal. It’s worth noting that the existing plan was adopted in 2015 with development plans up to 2026.

However, there is a new plan that is discussing a variety of current topics that the City needs to address that includes tall buildings, open spaces, culture, offices, housing as well as public services (London, 2018). As stated City of London local plan like other plans contains the corporation’s vision, policies, objectives as well as strategies that will facilitate in the continued planning of the City of London. It’s clear that the plans present an overall strategic plan that has integrated economic, social and transport structure for the development of the City of London in the next 20 plus years. The documents also present the geographic location of mayors’ aspects with specific policies on matters of economic development, housing development, health inequalities and environmental concerns with especially on issues of climate change. The planning is under the city corporation where with a variety of partners it is expected to deliver a healthy and inclusive city that will enable the communities to gain access to extensive education, recreation, health and leisure openings. In order to deliver this specific remedy for inclusivity in building and public spaces, air quality effects and health assessments, promoting healthy buildings, offer protection to the current social, public, sports and regeneration facilities (London, 2018).  In other words, more open spaces and a provision for the greening of the City seems to be the keys of the local plan. These will take care of climate change impacts, improve biodiversity, air quality and eventually backup health of the city dwellers. In this regard, the local plan has organized on how the existing open spaces will be protected and necessary developments in order to offer unique spaces where feasible. Some of the proposed developments include delivering green walls, roofs, as well as other green features. The plan has projected how the buildings and the public realm will have to be designed to sustain long-standing and resilience to climatic change with concerns on overheating and floods. Concerns on sustainable drainage are clear from the local plan where both transport developments must incorporate. The local also has measures on minimizing pollution from noise and unwanted light spillage.  The plan presents a spatial structure that coordinates a number of strategies that have been prepared by numerous key players. The plan has policies to be used in the development proposal decision making, and as a result, accounts for the economy, housing, employment and transport demand projected changes (London, 2018). In other words, it aims to uphold the City’s environment quality as well as historical content. The plan gives a guideline or a strategy on how to organize the City up to 2026 and even past that. Numerous small documents accompany the bigger plan, which presents guidance on specific areas of the City. They include:

• Policies Map, these offers guidance of areas that the local plan policies apply to precise areas.
• Local Development Structure; this document contains a list and description of the planning policy as a whole together with a timeline for their preparation.
• Supplementary Planning Documents which are used in setting out in details the way forward or the way certain policies in the local plan will be undertaken.
• There is also the Community Infrastructure Levy, which is a charging program with a setting on the way the levy is to be applied within numerous categories of development.

Apart from the above sections, the plan stipulates clearly how the plan will be implemented and delivered. In this case, the city corporation which is a critical player in the plan will be expected to work carefully with residents to make sure that the City Plan 2036 is implemented and delivers positive improvements all over the City. The plan has another crucial area that shows where the city plan is founded on by 2036. The aim is to ensure that the plan facilitates society flourishing, backup up a growing economy and develop an exceptional environment. This way, the City will have solved the issue of sustainable long-standing economic development. In other words, the City will be able to provide for its growing population, improve the environment as well as the quality of life. This approach aims to have a city that is projected to experience and continuing economic, and population growth to a more considerable extent, nonetheless short-term economic sequences. All the individual policy in this plan have been grouped within the themes stated in that they address the strategic context (London, 2018). Some other essential issues noted in the plan is on ensuring that the City has a necessary infrastructure in terms of mass evacuation routes and utility infrastructure. There is the issue of vulnerability aspects and water compatibility concerns on flood control infrastructure, navigation facilities, amenity and open spaces, among others.

The most impressive thing about the plan has organized on how to handle two significant aspects, namely healthy and inclusive city and security concerns of the City. In the case of a healthy city, the plan acknowledges that London is already densely built where it attracts a large daytime populace, and it has very limited open spaces. This plan has considered the need for incorporating security procedures at the beginning stage in its development procedure. As a result, considerations on the features of its occupiers, those known and might have their servicing policies. There is a clear approach in the plan on how the effects on the city developments will be in terms of provisioned open spaces in that the adopted landscaping include standard security procedures which are not retro-fitted. In other words, security concerns to be incorporated within the plan should not be based on the views of the planners alone, but London police need to be consulted where the developers see the police as advisers on developing matters such as counterterrorism procedures for public projects, specifically open spaces. Therefore, for a city to attain economic suggestion, it has to be able to minimize traffics congestion on its streets. In other words, a congested city can cause high cases of air pollution, noise and light, which can also be connected to limited open spaces, recreational spaces (London, 2018). All of these will eventually affect the health of those residing in the City, workers and city visitors. These are serious issues that a city plan has to address, and it’s impressive that the City of London plan has a projected on the issue for up to 2036.

The other issue that seems impressive is on the safety or security of the City. A city has to be a safe place to live, visit and work with no or reduced rate of crime. The plan has an emphasis on the significance of designing a secure and safe city. This has required the developers to put into consideration security structures at the onset of the design procedures and involve early with the City security or police departments in the plan. Furthermore, security concerns contribute to the success as a company and business base or even a place to spend free time (“Draft City Plan 2036 – City of London”, 2019). Thus as a leader in the world, the plan address to the security concerns reduces the potential risks from growing cases of terrorism and cybercrime in the world today. The notable area-based approaches towards implementing clear security measures are through the incorporation of security measure in the way the buildings will be designed. The strategies also deal with hostile vehicle alleviation measures and are supposed to incorporate proper dispersal channels from main development and entertaining night-time locations.

 

One of the primary concern or proposal that the plan seems to have ignored is the matters relating to the risks of climate change. This issue to cities has caused a detailed analysis of the public sources of greenhouse gas emissions and ways to reduce it. The assumption made saving energy is mainly and technology problem. However, this depends on the human behavior that can be impacted by the solutions concerning infrastructure and services such as having a clear plan on the safe routes favorable for non-motorized transport and comfy and dependable public transport. Notably, a large number of cities have been in the front end in taking note of the extent of the climate problems, and through local plans, they must be able to organize themselves to reduce GHG emissions. Therefore, the City of London plan can consider adopting the available variety of projects to enable it to promote energy savings and energy effectiveness and increase the share of renewable energy and local energy production. That is, as the project to have an expanded city, more energy will be required to run the City, and it’s important to anticipate that climate change will affect issues of energy production. However, the adoptions made on the local plan must be based on scientific evidence although science has no capacity of providing an absolute certainty about the future.

.References

Draft City Plan 2036 – City of London. (2019). Retrieved 10 December 2019, from https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/services/environment-and-planning/planning/planning-policy/Pages/Local-Plan-Review.aspx

London, C. o. (2018). City of London local plan draft for draft for consultation. 1-218.