We get sent a lot of reports here at Londonist. But it's not every day that one starts by suggesting a city wide drone service.
Step forward engineers and consultants Arup, who've just published 10 big ideas they'd like to see the next mayor take up. Here are our favourites:
Drones for London
Instead of being a pest at airports or being used to film amazing airborne videos, Arup reckons the mayor could use drones to help public services. How? Maybe by assisting in search and rescue or other emergency response situations, or monitoring air quality. Beats using pigeons.
Turning the green belt into a national park
Quite cunning, this one. By acknowledging that a surprising amount of London's green belt is quite poor quality, creating a national park would involve assessing all of the green belt and seeing how much of it is, actually, green. Those bits become the park, and the rest can potentially be released for development.
Set up a night market on Oxford Street
Our city is running out of space, contends Arup, so why don't we make better use of the space we have? Instead of parts of town falling quiet in the evenings, the mayor could provide space to new businesses by providing temporary sites at night. A night market on Oxford Street, for example, would take advantage of the night tube and give opportunities to traders, pop-up restaurants and events.
To read more, visit the Arup website.
