London: More by Fortune Than Design

Combining historical, social science, and urban planning principles, this new title in the World Cities Series explores the 20th century struggles over the modernization of London. It reviews the solutions proposed, charts their successes and failures, and hints at what lessons learned can be applied elsewhere.

Plague, fire, imperial collapse, the Blitz, Thatcherism - London rises triumphant, still one of the brokers of the global economy and still one of the most livable cities in the world.

London is a city of villages. Six hundred square miles of streets stretch in every direction, home to an extraordinary range of ethnic and cultural groups. The domestic scale of the city's architecture has always been one of its great attractions as has the number and variety of its parks and gardens. Yet this is also a city which vies with New York and Tokyo for domination of the global economy.

The post-war struggle over the modernisation of London's urban fabric forms the centre of this book. A third day of the city has been rebuilt. The city's entire centre of gravity has shifted eastwards. Yet, districts and a working system of local government have managed to survive. How has London survived? What is its future?

London excavates this city of contradictions to discover that the richness is in the detail and that the secret is the city's refusal to bend to any master plan.