How to keep London thriving until 2050

A major big city infrastructure company has produced an imaginative report on how the capital can maintain its "competitive advantage" in the world for the next 35 years

The vastness, vagaries and complexity of the capital make forecasting a perilous game. Things that seemed both inevitable and desirable just a few decades ago have turned out to be entirely wrong. Yet neglecting to peer into tomorrow carries risks of its own, not least a failure to identify and lessen risk itself. Design and infrastructure consultants Atkins have been applying themselves to the task of anticipating how the city needs to evolve from now until 2050. A document entitled Future Proofing London is the wide-ranging and cogent result.

The aim is to sustain what the report terms London's "competitive advantage" as a world city. Valuably, it sees the pursuit of this goal as closely aligned with lessening the inequality and enhancing the greenness of the metropolis. The opposite outcomes would in each case be menaces to London. Four threats altogether are listed, the first of which is - very topically - a failure to meet housing need. Neglecting to foster economic diversity completes the quartet.