With the current standoff over the London Plan between Robert Jenrick and Sadiq Khan, it is interesting to look back at the last days of Boris Johnson’s administration when the Mayor’s Design Advisory Group (MDAG) produced a ‘billet-doux’ for the new incumbent to assist in the delivery of ‘Good Growth’.

 

MDAG’s Good Growth Agenda was produced in association with the NLA and launched in Store Street in February 2016, a few months before the Mayoral Elections in May. It formed a ‘bunch of ideas’, a ‘provocation to a debate’ to the next mayor as well as the broader built environment industry in the run-up to a new London Plan.

 

The group’s position was that ‘good growth’ resulted in an inclusive city that was a pleasant place to work, visit or stay. It delivered a balanced mix of young and old, of housing tenures, of jobs. It enriched the city’s great public and civic spaces both internal and external. It allowed for vitality and change, building on the ‘London-ness’ that is a crucial part of the capital’s character and enduring appeal.

 

The report included lots of ideas that subsequently found themselves into policy and the New London Plan like the need to review the density matrix and the relationship with PTAL, better and more granular planning of the location of tall buildings, the use of 3D modelling to assist better planning, an accent on local character, unambiguous access to public space and a greater focus on active travel. 

 

It also proposed the establishment of a London Place Agency which would put place-shaping practitioners at the service of overstretched boroughs. The Agency would build a pool of skills and expertise to grow the public sector’s capacity to deliver homes and develop a new generation of place-shaping professionals committed to working with communities to shape better places. That agency is now Public Practice which has been so successful in embedding skills within London’s boroughs over the last four years.

 

The Good Growth title was retained by the incoming Deputy Mayor for Planning, Jules Pipe: the new Mayor’s Good Growth by Design programme included the appointment of 50 Mayor’s Design Advocates and the Good Growth Fund is Khan’s £70 million regeneration programme to support growth and community development in London. This is in encouraging contrast to politicians’ usual policy of rejecting anything with their predecessor’s fingerprints.