The Making Of A World City - London 1991 To 2021

In 1986 the UK Government abolished city government in London, and there was a vacuum of ideas and directions for the future of this once great city. But somehow London flourished and in 1991 the word ‘world city’ was used to describe its agenda or the future in a ground breaking report. 20 years later London is the leading city in the world. How did they do that?

The text is based around interviews with 60 key urban thinkers and practitioners from around the world, backed up by data and charts, regarding their views on London’s past, current and future position and challenges as a World City.

The study was inspired by the untimely death of Honor Chapman and has been funded by 5 of the property markets’ key players, Grosvenor, Land Securities, Great Portland Estates, the London Communications Agency and ourselves. Honor was renowned and highly respected for her analysis and insights into cities and their property markets and her involvement in the original 1991 book, London World City was testament to this. The recommendations that came from that project laid many of the foundations of modern city marketing and certainly were instrumental in making London what it is today.

The study gives a detailed guide to how London’s governance was set up and of the stages of the cities evolution, as well as thoughts from many of the world’s leading urban thinkers on where to go from here. Cities are of course high on national and regional agendas at the moment as we all try to work out the impact of urbanisation; for this reason we feel that there is a ready international market for understanding “how London did it” and what it will do next.

Greg Clark is a Londoner and expert on world cities. He works as an advisor to OECD, World Bank, Brookings Institution, ULI and more than 20 major cities around the world (including Auckland, Barcelona, Brisbane, Cape Town, Hong Kong, Johannesburg, Moscow, New York, Oslo, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Singapore, Sydney and Toronto) but learned what he knows from working in London as a leader in city agencies during the period covered by this book. He has written four books for the OECD and several published reports for the Brookings Institution, British Council and ULI.