Last week I participated in the NLA NextGen roundtable debate on ‘Centralisation vs Decentralisation’. The debate was part of the London Real Estate Forum, which was investigating how rapid technological, economic and societal changes are having a profound impact on the way that we design, build and manage our city.

Prior to the event, I was randomly assigned to the 'decentralisation team' and I was therefore speaking in favour of decentralisation as a strategy to help solve the issues of housing provision in London. Core to the debate was the drastically decreasing affordability of London, and how the average percentage of income spent on rent in London is 49%, compared to 27% elsewhere in the UK. (Your post-work Friday night drink can also be up to three times more expensive than in other cities, and your weekly shop around £14 more expensive.)

Parallel to this, we are seeing changes in working habits with a significant increase of self-employed people, as well as increase in popularity of flexible working hours and demand for flexible workspace. Encouraging polycentric development throughout the boroughs of Greater London, and/or within corridors which connect into London, offers the opportunity to capitalise on both lower land values and existing, characterful communities to increase the provision of affordable homes and workplaces at a quicker and more sustainable rate.

Decentralisation also gives built environment professionals the opportunity to create new models of living and working, or new innovative housing typologies, that can sit within truly mixed-use communities; respond to current challenges; and make use of existing, perhaps underused, infrastructure. It may surprise you that there is approximately 64,000 hectares of land within one mile of existing train and tube stations in and around London – this arguably offers great potential for new decentralised development.

There was a strong argument from the opposition. They identified concerns that decentralisation could create isolated settlements that did not offer the same buzz, attraction or opportunities as city centre life. London is diverse and has a vast sharing economy and by discouraging development in the centre we could threaten this. The issue that decentralisation may impact on the green belt was also raised. However, despite a valiant effort in favour of centralisation, team decentralisation was declared the winners of the afternoon!