Canary Wharf stands as one of the most recognisable parts of London’s skyline. It is a bustling centre of business and a home for thousands of Londoners.
But 50 years ago, this part of our capital was in a state of disrepair. In the 1970s, London’s docklands lay largely derelict – a result of bomb damage from the Second World War and rapid changes in the shipping industry.
But then, in 1980, the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) was set up with a clear mission: revitalise and regenerate the docks.
The LDDC was the first of a new type of body – an urban development corporation (UDC) – and it delivered immense change over the 80s and 90s. It enabled the building of 24,000 homes (one in every ten completed across Greater London between 1981-98), 17 million sq ft of office space, 130 hectares of new open space and the creation of 85,000 jobs by 1998.
Most remarkably of all, with £1.86 billion of public money, the LDDC leveraged £7.66bn from the private sector: a four-to-one return.
Fundamentally, it showed that a lean, business-led body with the right planning powers can move faster than the traditional system and rapidly deliver the housing and infrastructure cities need.
It feels especially apt today. London is wrestling with a housing shortage that prices out many people – particularly the young – and deprives them of the opportunities and dynamism that city life offers. The Adam Smith Institute’s Cost of Rent Day showed that English renters worked a staggering 125 days just to pay their landlord.
As our new research shows, the eastward corridor of the Thames Gateway is an obvious place to create a new UDC.
Stretching from Tower Hamlets through Barking to Dartford and Southend, the area already houses more than 3m people but still contains swathes of low-density, under-used land.
Unlike alternatives to the north or west, expanding here barely nibbles at the green belt and sidesteps many of the political trip-wires that stall schemes elsewhere.
The Jubilee line, DLR and the Elizabeth line converge with High-Speed 1, London City and Southend airports – the bones of an integrated transport web to benefit businesses and commuters.
Analysis from our partner LandTech has already identified capacity for 163,500 additional dwellings.
We believe a properly empowered UDC could catalyse hundreds of thousands of homes overall while unlocking billions in private investment – the very formula that worked in the Docklands.
Critically for Londoners, those homes would sit within 20-60 minutes of the City and Canary Wharf. Opening eastward supply would ease pressure on inner-borough rents that have risen twice as fast as wages since the pandemic.
Businesses, meanwhile, would gain room to expand without leap-frogging the M25: vital if the capital is to stay globally competitive.
This new Thames Gateway UDC would be led by a small board of proven private and public sector leaders. Working across local authority boundaries, it would be equipped with powers to acquire and clean up sites and approve planning applications in weeks, not years.
Some Londoners will fear a repeat of early Docklands gentrification disputes. But a 2020s UDC can bake in affordable quotas and design codes from day one, while still letting architects and developers respond organically to market demand.
London has always thrived by looking east, from the medieval wharves of Wapping to the post-Olympic rebirth of Stratford.
A Thames Gateway UDC is the next logical step: big enough to dent the capital’s housing crisis, bold enough to attract global capital and with a proven model to reassure investors.
The Docklands regeneration was based on a bold vision and an ambitious development model. That combination should be brought to bear once again to help our capital city grow and thrive.
Read ‘Dwharfing the City: The Next Generation of Urban Development Corporations’ here.
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