Picture the Piazza San Marco, the beating heart of Venice, in the manner it was surely always meant to be seen: packed to the brim with Fiat Puntos. Or imagine Barcelona’s Las Ramblas the way nature intended, the trees and cafes pulled out, the pedestrians shoved aside, the cars bumper to bumper as far as the eye can see. Does Manhattan even need Central Park? Central Car Park has a nice ring to it.
Even in a country as petrol-headed as the United States, there are parts of New York that remain closed to cars. In Britain, though, we might love our existing pedestrianised spaces but any attempt to create new ones is greeted with a storm of protest. The attempts to create “low traffic neighbourhoods” during the pandemic resulted in acts of vandalism, arson, conspiracy theories and death threats. The part-time pedestrianisation of London’s Soho, introduced to allow bars and restaurants to trade in the months after lockdown, gave London the sort of outdoor nightlife district that most European cities take for granted; the streets were still handed back to cars the moment circumstances allowed.
Even those schemes that succeeded – the partial pedestrianisation of Trafalgar Square in the early 2000s; the scheme to pedestrianise a part of the Strand, in the early 2020s – were bitterly opposed in some quarters: because they cost money, because it was the other party which was doing them, because some people do not understand that you can reduce traffic without damaging the economy. Once these schemes are complete, the opposition inevitably fades, and no one in their right mind would undo them; yet somehow, we never learn.
All of which brings us to Oxford Street, one of the world’s busiest and least enjoyable shopping streets, a narrow canyon choked with buses and all the associated fumes. Sadiq Khan was elected mayor on a promise of pedestrianising it all the way back in 2016. The following year, his administration published artists’ impressions of plans to close it to traffic in stages, raising the roads to the level of the pavements and introducing trees and benches and public art. The bus network, meanwhile, would be extensively redesigned, with some routes diverted and others curtailed, something made possible by the then apparently imminent arrival of the Elizabeth Line.
It didn’t happen. Some retailers feared the reduced road access would affect their business; the voters of West End ward fretted about the disruption caused by construction, or diverted traffic, or the unwanted appearance of a redirected bus. So when the 2018 local elections rolled around, the Tory-held Westminster Council withdrew their support. Labour took the council for the first time in 2022, but facing the same electorate they came to a similar conclusion. The scheme appeared to be dead.
Until last Tuesday, when the mayor of London’s office put out a press release. This time there were no fancy artists’ impressions (those interested are directed to look at the old ones). There’s little detail of what it’ll mean for the bus network either (so we can probably assume the previous plans largely stand there, too). Nonetheless, there are two things that make me think that this time it might actually happen.
The first is the promise of the designation of a new “mayoral development corporation” like the ones created for the Olympic Park or Park Royal. What area this will cover – just the street itself, or a much wider swathe of the West End – is not yet clear. But this apparently technical change means effectively removing Westminster council’s, and local residents’, veto, and managing Oxford Street for the benefit of the city as a whole. That’s presumably why the list of people quoted in support of the plan include the bosses of John Lewis, BusinessLDN, the New West End Company, and the Clean Cities Campaign, plus, bafflingly, the mayors of both Paris and Barcelona – but not anyone from the borough it actually affects.
The other thing that makes me think it might actually happen is the headline: “Mayor of London and government announce bold plans to transform Oxford Street.” Someone else quoted in support of the plan is the deputy prime minister and communities secretary, Angela Rayner.
As mayor of London, Sadiq Khan has often been criticised for his relatively modest list of policy achievements. The defence was always that, unlike his predecessors, he had only ever had a hostile government to contend with: this apparent willingness to use central government muscle to overrule local blockers in the interests of the capital as a whole suggests there might have been something in this. It suggests, too, that – when it comes to the really big planning decisions – this government might be willing to take on local opposition and actually push stuff through.
It’s not a done deal. And the likelihood of Labour losing Westminster Council again in 2026 has surely just increased. But I bet you, once it’s done, it’ll seem mad that anyone ever opposed it.
[See also: England’s maternity care shame]
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