Corporate Social Review Magazine 1st Quarter 2013 | Page 20

150 years of London
Underground: What
we can learn from the
world’s first megacity
Today, Greater London is facing one of its biggest challenges
ever; how to prepare for a future which will see around 3 million
new people move to the city in the next 30 years, and how to
make that city of the future a sustainable one.
ElcaMediaGroup spoke with Simon Mills, Head of Sustainable
Development for City of London, about the work he has done
over the past decade, and what he believes it will take for the city
to meet the challenges of the future.
The fact is you cannot prevent the march of history.
We are facing a tsunami of challenges going forward with the
additional 2 or 3 billion people who are going to need housing
and feeding and watering and energy, and we simply cannot
deliver services using existing models.
So the future must be a green one.
To read the article in full, click Sustainability Leadership interview
with Simon Mills, Head of Sustainable Development for City of
London
Today the London Underground celebrates its 150th anniversary.
How does the London Underground fit in with the smart city
concept, and how do you see this develop further in the future?
The London underground is absolutely essential to the success
of the City of London, used by more than 3 million people every
day. Currently, we only have a residential population of around
8 or 9,000 people in the square mile, but more than 300,000
commute into the city to work every day. Our projections are that
by 2025, 450,000 people are going to be commuting into the city.
Within London, we face some significant challenges when it
comes to the smart cities concept. Because we were the world’s
first megacity, a lot of the infrastructure which we still use today
is from the Victorian era, so it’s over a hundred years old. This is

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very different from the new