What does London need?

[FurrySlipperBoots]

Following on from that thread about disappointing places, what would you do to make London better?

I would make smoking just anywhere on the street completely illegal, instead having small designated smoking booths you'd have to pay to enter. All the profits going to the NHS, as would the massive fines anyone caught smoking on the street would have to pay.

I'd make it much more cyclist friendly, like Copenhagen. It would also a legal requirement for every bike rider to wear a helmet!

I'd replace the diesel buses with trolly buses/trams.

I would have new buildings built in the style of the beautiful old Georgian architecture. The modern buildings are ugly and just clash horribly!

There need to be more window boxes with colourful flowers to counteract the grey! Compared to other cities I've been to there aren't a great deal of flowers.

Some sort of increased tax on London's super-rich. It seems so wrong that there are so many billionaires in the same city where people are sleeping on the streets.

I'd hugely tax bottled mineral water but provide fresh water dispensers on each street so people could just fill their reusable bottles.

If you had the power, what would you do to improve the capital city?

I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

London needs the country to recognise that it isn't the be all and end all or the centre of the universe and it, and the rest of the country would benefit from spreading jobs, opportunities, investment, cultural activities etc etc more evenly around the country instead of continually trying to cram everything into one already overcrowded corner of the country.

I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Turn the resulting crater into a National Park.

I agree. London is the only place in the country according to most media.

London needs less non-Londoners!

London needs to stop building. Bloody cranes everywhere and higher rents closing all the lovely small independent shops.

London needs affordable housing and 24 hour transport.

Tougher on crime. This is a city where a moped theft gets off scott free but the policeman who knocked him off his bike to arrest him gets jailed

We need a chewing gum ban.

Also, rent control, ban on non UK purchasing property to just leave it vacant, and 10 year minimum prison sentence for every knife crime, there must be no mercy

London needs to realise it's not the centre of everything.
The rest of the country could do with the investment & time this city as thrown at it.

A Land Value Tax charged at escalating levels for properties worth £1m, £2m, £3m, £5m etc etc. The idea being that ordinary people living in ordinary houses would pay much the same as they do now in council tax, but the rich would pay much, much more.

Pedestrianisation of major shopping / entertainment areas eg Oxford St, Kensington High St, Shaftesbury Ave etc etc.

Ban all religious garb that covers the face.

Disagree re cycle helmets as research shows no benefit to cyclists. Overall, non helmet wearers fares better than helmet wearers. Odd but true. I think the answer is to separate the traffic completely.

I’d create a Thames lido in central London - a floating pool.
I’d also ban smoking and drinking alcohol in the streets.

Increased fines for littering with more park wardens.
Better signage of walking routes.
More public lavatories and drinking fountains.

Overall though, London is a fabulous city. Walking across St James Park on a snowy evening, sitting in Bloomsbury Square on a sunny afternoon, pottering along the South Bank watching the buskers, theatre, history, music, green spaces - London has them all.

I'd make it much more cyclist friendly, like Copenhagen. It would also a legal requirement for every bike rider to wear a helmet!
I

If you wanted it like Copenhagen then nobody would wear a helmet.

I'd make it much more cyclist friendly, like Copenhagen. It would also a legal requirement for every bike rider to wear a helmet!

Your first point is strangely at odds with your second, as the pic shows.

I would find some way of air conditioning the underground.

I know that cyclists in Copenhagen don't tend to wear helmets. But in my 'new improved' London they would.

I'd ban cyclists they're a pita

Fewer cars, more pedestrian areas and less littering.

Brilliant idea for a thread. I'll be back when I'm not drunk!

London needs the country to recognise that it isn't the be all and end all or the centre of the universe and it, and the rest of the country would benefit from spreading jobs, opportunities, investment, cultural activities etc etc more evenly around the country instead of continually trying to cram everything into one already overcrowded corner of the country.

The rest of the country already knows that London isn't the be all and end all, or the centre of the universe. Londoners need to recognise this.

But London IS the centre of everything. Nowhere else in the UK compares

More fountain splash areas like other cities for children, more child friendly.... places, square to sit etc... with children.

More public loos

Definitely more child friendly outdoor spaces!