It has been a very busy month, so I have several things to tell you about before I am off on leave. Camping in the Lake District, since you ask, and I have timed it just as the heatwave is ending so it will be raining horizontally.  No doubt the experience will be intents.

Firstly, tremendously exciting news, I can finally break cover with the news that next year's Lord Mayor, who will take office in November will make sustainability the core theme of their Mayoralty. You may recall I was dropping hints about this back in February.



Image source: Factory 15



As I intimated then, the driver is global mega-trends- by 2050 70% of the worlds 10 billion people will be living in cities. Developing the infrastructure to support them, in a warming, resource constrained world will a major challenge.

However, where there is a challenge there is also an opportunity and London has a unique offering -

• We have world class consulting engineering and architecture firms, to help decision makers design the cities of tomorrow.
• We have the financial services organisations who can help them pay for them
• We have the legal firms who can help them design the contracts to get them built
• We have the insurance that can ensure that these future cities are resilient.

Selling these services to the world, particularly the rapidly expanding cities of India and China will be a major market for the 21st century- perhaps one that can revive the UK's economic fortunes.

This is why, next years Lord Mayor is embarking on an major programme which will seek to promote this aspect of London's services.  

Core to this is the development of a new strand of the London Accord/Long Finance project- Financing Tomorrows City . Follow the link to view the latest research.

I am delighted to announce that following discussion,  Acclimatise, who are long time contributors to the London Accord, will be posting the adaptation strategies of a number of other world Cities on the website- this will be the first time that all of these adaptation strategies have been gathered in one place.  

For the next 18 months I will be talking to organisations and institutions across London- from the Royal Society and Imperial College to the Future Cities Catapult and the World Cities Network to pull together a programme of activities to support the Mayoralty.

I will let you know how I get on.