DT: So, is this a report? Is it a group of people who are debating issues? What form will London 3.0 take?

PB: It’s a process, and has been going on for about a year to 18 months already and in different forms and at different intensities.  I think of it in three ways; three stages. It’s consider; celebrate; and calibrate. The ‘consider’ is to step back and consider what has been changed in London. What have we done that has improved the capital? What has the impact of the change in London been for our everyday lives, for all the business world, for the whole way that the city functions? And in all of that it's important to celebrate - to really think about what we have achieved. I think that's important, David, because actually we need to have the confidence to move forward. Reminding ourselves how much has changed by direct action Is important, and celebrating that is important in helping us move to the next stage and knowing that we can be masters of our destiny.

DT:  To what degree has COVID derailed some of this stuff? Or, as another way of looking at it, has it accelerated it?

PB: So, the third aspect of it was always going to be ‘calibrate’, and what COVID  has done is actually bought forward the need to calibrate the way we think and plan our city. In the past 20 years, we've actually spent a lot of time promoting, thinking, trying to put in more facilities for walking and cycling; and that's been hard because people have not necessarily wanted to change their behaviour. COVID has actually accelerated behaviour change rapidly. It's been a real-time experiment in what can happen if we leave our cars at home and walk and cycle. And as a consequence, more people are cycling, more people are walking, local authorities are grabbing space back from motor vehicles; things that previously it has taken years to think about and plan have been happening overnight. So it's accelerating a lot of change that we would want. 

But COVID is also a perverse positive in the way it's highlighted the inequalities of London and our society. The fact that there's so many people in Tower Hamlets and Newham who have had very poor outcomes and deaths or ill health as a consequence of COVID is just one example, because of the inequality, partly, and a whole host of other reasons. So it's actually helping me concentrate minds on the things that I was doing anyway through London 3.0, which is looking at how people truly live a life in London and thinking how we plan for those lives, how we improve those lives, how we build a city that is for all, as opposed to a section of society that can afford to live in very expensive environments.

DT:  So, final question because our time is running out a bit. This week we are waiting on Robert Jenrick's planning reforms and I was wondering how you saw that? How optimistic are you? Are you dreading the extension of Permitted Development Rights or thinking that design might be taking a bit of a back seat on all this? And, indeed, whether planning has become a bit of a political punch bag, without any merit in that argument?

PB: Yeah. I am worried about it. I think there is sense of optimism because we have to renew high streets, for example, and if there's an opportunity to use these to actually refresh places which are now redundant, that would be a positive outcome. But one of my concerns about London over the past 20 years is we have actually atrophied staff and expertise because of austerity and we have had less time and less emphasis on thinking about what we want, what does good look like and what do we want and shepherding that in a long term way. And, you know, spending time iterating things that don't work. Then any more things which are a blunt instrument are just potentially the death knell on urban quality.  

Cities for me are like orchestras.  They can be a wonderful harmony if we have a good conductor that is guiding that process, and everyone knows the part they are playing and can work in tune. But if it's disharmony, if it's everyone doing their own thing, then the discordant notes in our urban fabric are going to happen very rapidly as people do their own thing without a guiding hand. It bothers me considerably. We need to have an overall plan where people can do quick interventions once we know what the overall plan is. But if people just do their own thing in a piecemeal fashion without that sort of process, without the buy-in of local communities, then it's actually going to set us back considerably in terms of community development and urban quality.

DT: So – taking your analogy – has mayor Sadiq Khan been a decent conductor?

PB: Up to a point. His ‘good growth’ tune is positive, but with so many competing demands on the city, the challenges are significant. So, that means not just orchestrating, it’s being able to work collectively to write the symphony as well as perform it. And – given that many of the issues are micro, not macro, it needs nuanced, local, solutions – the Mayor’s powers and policies can only take London so far. And that takes us back to the need for investment; in resources, time and the right ‘connectors’ at a local level.

DT: I was desperate to get in a joke there about an orchestra and ‘built up arias’, but that is probably is not going to work, is it? (laughs)

PB: (laughs) No! Not out of my mouth!

DT: Magic, that’s brilliant, Pat. Thanks!

PB: Super. Thank you very much David.