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• Reference: 2001/0098-1
• Question by: Andrew Pelling
• Meeting date: 11 July 2001

What support and service do you feel that you and your unit will be able to give to Outer London Boroughs seeking to re-invigorate district centres and develop key derelict sites? Specifically in South London what kind of action do you feel could be pursued to boost district centres like Norbury, Coulsdon, Purley, Worcester Park and Wallington that sit astride key FtL roads full of heavy traffic and to get development off the ground at key sites like the Croydon Gateway site at East Croydon? .

• Question by: Andrew Pelling
• Meeting date: 11 July 2001

I think you share the Mayor's view of the efficacy of tall buildings particularly in the key transport nodal points. Obviously there is great sensitivity for those developments in Central London. What role to you think some outer London venues have in terms of acting as host to those type of tall buildings? I represent a constituency in South London where virtually the amount of development has been very limited during the 1990s but there is a great deal of space for that type of development. What role would you see perhaps for South London in fulfilling that Mayoral desire...

• Question by: Andrew Pelling
• Meeting date: 11 July 2001

I suppose it will be an argument for sustainable development if you can get people to commute out in the morning and in the evening to some of these key suburban office sites. I represent Croydon which as you say perhaps has a false pride in terms of its tall buildings, desire for tall buildings, but it is perhaps in many ways a good opportunity to put some of the tall buildings that might fit in within a Manhattan style skyline in Croydon which might not suit necessarily next to St Paul's Cathedral.

• Question by: Trevor Phillips
• Meeting date: 11 July 2001

I may be misleading you. We can argue about how high and all of that stuff. But specifically you were talking about the skyline which is not a one dimensional thing, it is actually about the shape of it, it is about a vision of it. Now what I am really wanting is what you actually have in mind about what that vision might be and where it is determined and how toughly it can be enforced?

• Question by: Trevor Phillips
• Meeting date: 11 July 2001

What you would stop?

• Question by: Trevor Phillips
• Meeting date: 11 July 2001

It was all going very well until you mentioned skyline. You say it is a mess but I wonder why -- it has always been a mess. The mess that we see in Canaletto may be a different sort of mess than the one we have got now, but the point I want to make really is, it has almost grown organically. What have you in mind to sort it out?

• Question by: Trevor Phillips
• Meeting date: 11 July 2001

This is very interesting because what you seem to be suggesting - I am not going to offer judgment on it - is that we do have to make a choice and one choice is let it go and the other choice is a rather tougher, more dirigiste regulatory framework than currently exists. Now I am not going to make any analogy to soviet policies or anything like that but let's just be clear. You obviously have something in mind. How tough, how directed and by whom? Because that is obviously the way you would like to lead.