London is changing thanks to coronavirus – it may never be the same again

It is the small things that you notice. People are walking faster. We are all having to relearn the art of navigating shared pavements. The traffic is suddenly a lot heavier; you have to remember to look both ways. I even saw someone yesterday walking down the street in a suit and tie.  

In central London, where I have spent most of the last six months, all this is very recent. The start of a return to something like “normality” only began here with the return of schools and parliament. We will see how the latest government edicts – the so called "law of six", and new efforts at enforcing mask-wearing - reverse any of this. Government offices, though, like those in the City and the Docklands financial district, still look very empty.

The slow pace of London’s revival – slower even than most city centres – the reluctance of people to use public transport (especially the Tube), the new quality of life many erstwhile commuters have discovered while working, of necessity, from home, all militate against vast swathes of London ever returning to the frenetic, full-to-bursting metropolis that it was before coronavirus struck.

The question is: should anyone be sorry? Even if cities, as social and cultural phenomena, are not actually doomed – and this looks unlikely, given the endurance of cities through the ages. What will the future be for London specifically? A part of me would love to wave a wand and see the London of a year ago miraculously restored. But another part of me delighted in the quiet, the clean air and the emptiness of April. Plus, the vistas that were revealed in the deserted city: the great sweep of Regent Street to Piccadilly, the elegance of the ensemble around Parliament Square (pity about the scaffolding around parliament), and the verdant parks and the luminous blue of the Thames.  

Might it not be possible to revive London somewhere between its extremes? More lively and more populated than now, but less crowded and more relaxed than it used to be? Nor is this a parochial question. The future of London matters not only to those of us who live here, but those who will probably still have to work here. London is the national capital and a national issue – despite the government’s brief flirtation with hiving the Lords off to York.

But there was a lot wrong with the old London. It was, and is, unusual among capital cities in the scale of its dominance. The size of its population, GDP, productivity and wealth is vastly out of all proportion to the rest of the country. In many big countries, political, business and cultural capitals are different, or more centrally situated. Think: Washington and New York, Berlin and Frankfurt, Canberra and Sydney, Moscow and St Petersburg.

Activity has gravitated to the southeast of the country for so long – with the knock-on effects on the price of land, living costs and the configuration of transport links – it has left a skewed economy and demography

Its politics, too. The EU referendum showed how far London was out of sync with the rest of the country – or at least the rest of England. London emerged as an island of Remainers in a country of Leave. It was keener even than Scotland to stay in the EU.  

London’s dominance bred resentment. One of the Remain campaign’s most ill-judged pitches before that referendum came from the then chancellor, George Osborne. He went around the country warning that a Leave victory could ruin the City of London as a global financial centre, and with it the prosperity of the country as a whole. Such a message might have received a sympathetic ear in London. Outside the capital, the all too predictable response was: bring it on.

The City was seen not as the fount of the UK’s wellbeing, but as a parasite sucking the lifeblood from the rest of the country. It was an image that had been reinforced by the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, when “fat cat” bankers were seen to have been let off, scot-free, while “ordinary” people had to pay the price through “austerity”. Foreign billionaires’ and tourists’ enthusiasm for London was rarely shared by those whose capital it was, who tried to avoid its noise, crowds and costs – well, like the plague.

So it might not be unfair to conclude that London is getting its comeuppance. It was the first part of the country to be hit – and it was severely hit – by the pandemic, and it may well never be the same again. When Boris Johnson first promised a programme of national “levelling up”, after his unexpectedly big victory in the last election, there was no sense that this might also entail some “levelling down”. Post-pandemic, however, that may be what has to happen. London may have to cede some of its dominance, even some of its wealth, and there are positive ways in which that could happen.

There are likely to be fewer people: fewer people coming into the city every day as commuters and fewer people – in the short term, at least – living here, as some seek less crowded and less urban places to live. One, perhaps temporary, result could be a poorer city, as those who can afford to move out. If, though, an effect is lower prices – and rents are already falling – people could be attracted back into the city to live, rather than to commute, and a more rooted population could  have a stabilising effect.

Fewer commuters could change the types, or at least, the balance of commerce, towards the sort of services needed by residents and those needed by day-workers. Those shedding tears for Pret a Manger need to recognise that such chains had already reached saturation in parts of the capital. Fewer chains could mean more local businesses and some shops and offices perhaps replaced by housing (real housing for real people, rather than the speculative blocks of “luxury” flats built in the past decade).  

There may be hope, too, that the recent contest to build the ugliest statement high-rise in the City may be be at an end. How many, I wonder, of the tower blocks already given planning permission never come to fruition, not just because there is an oversupply of office space, but because high-rise becomes a hard-sell if there has to be social distancing in lifts. Lower prices all round could narrow the gap between London and elsewhere.

A better balance between commuters and residents and less overcrowding could make London more like other European capitals, and a more pleasant place just to move around and be. Car use – and that includes Ubers, if they keep their licence – would be restricted to those, such as disabled people, who really need them. There would be cleaner, quieter roads.

With aircraft noise now more noticeable, the powers that be might finally persuaded to curb air traffic over densely populated areas (and stop waking London up with flights approaching their landing before dawn). I have missed travelling as much as anyone in recent months, but one of the more welcome casualties of the pandemic should surely be Heathrow’s third runway – and anyone else’s new runway, too.

Now is the time for the particular strengths and weaknesses that made London particularly vulnerable to the pandemic to be turned into a civic and national opportunity. Slower, greener, less hard-edged, more liveable and – please – more respectful of its architectural heritage. Let this be the capital’s future.