Communities

Most of the initiatives taken by the current mayor are simply window dressing, not seriously for communities. The mayor should save the extra money he has spent on public relations and press staff and spend it on the real local communities. This mayor is interested only in boosting his own PR rather than helping Londoners.

I think there is too much emphasis on the property market. Estate Agents sponsoring school fairs and influence what happens in an area for a fake, superficial belief they are making things better. All that matters to them is house prices. We should go past this. Gentrification of an area does not make it better but somehow shallow. Moving Londoners out of London does not create a community feel.

It takes every kind of person to make a community and the way middle class people take over and elbow people out of the way or misdirect them is not nice. I think this is a big problem in London as I have moved several times to 3 different areas in SW London. I have always lived here and you have people that move to London from other parts of the country or even the world and they try to act in charge of you or dominate you. It MAKES ME ILL. 

I have always been willing to welcome new people and cultures but find they do not like Londoners and assume you are racist or ignorant. There has been a lot making  us inclusive when we already are trying and there ends up being a lot that excludes people. It is like we have gone into overkill on an issue. 

We know we need to make changes and if there were a real sense of community we would want our environment cleaner.

Littering is a big issue.It should not be up to an individual to clean up an area. Now plastic pollution is highlighting an issue of pointless plastic and shows we need to change how we live.

Supermarkets have killed towns and local parades of shops. Farmers markets are aimed at middle classes. When really a greengrocer and baker would offer plastic free shopping and should be in every community. It appears that chosing to live plastic free becomes and expensive choice. Every community should have a refill store. It would help reduce rubbish and then we would have less rubbish to collect. 

We all need to live more mindfully.

City Hall will continue to invest in the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC). The programme focuses on economic development, driven by inclusive design practices so that neighbourhoods, workplaces, transport and homes are accessible to all Londoners. The proposed gross revenue expenditure for LLDC in 2020-21 is £65.7 million (with a capital spend of £279.1 million) -  great but can you remove the premium added to any disabled accessible properties, i've noticed premiums of £100+ per month for accessibility how is that fair?

Surely the bigger focus rather than on the 6/10 that think London is welcoming is the 4/10 who think it isn't? It would be interesting to break down who London isn't perceived as being welcoming for. As mentioned in another section, the 1000 cultural and community events may not actually be reaching those who feel London isn't welcoming. Community events are great if you already feel part of the community and so you hear about these events.

More needs to be done to get people talking to, and getting to know their neighbours more. It is largely due to that fact that most residential streets are a mixture of through roads for fast-moving motor traffic (also known as rat-running), and that most of streets, over time, have essentially been converted into car parks. Most residential streets have now become unpleasant places for residents to gather and be social with one another, thanks to the lack of space taken up by parked cars, the poor air quality caused by rat-running traffic, the noise caused by rat-running traffic and fears for safety thanks to fast moving rat-running traffic. It is for these same reasons why children are playing outside less than previous generations used to. 

Added to this, people are spending less time shopping in their local area and using their cars to travel further out to large supermarkets with even larger car parks. The days when you could catch-up with a neighbour in your local shop are fast disappearing. With the help of the Mayor of London, local authorities need to undo decades of pandering to the needs of motorists and focus on the needs and aspirations of local people - including children. They need to install modal filtering on residential streets to stop rat-running traffic and remove car parking in order to transofrm our streets into pleasant spaces where people actually want to spend time.