ABSTRACT
London was the world’s first modern metropolis. The first to reach a million population in the early nineteenth century, London has since then functioned as a laboratory in which a succession of models of metropolitan government have been tried, assessed and superseded. London’s new mayoral structure, headed by the high profile Ken Livingstone, has attracted keen international attention. At the same time, the Capital’s social and economic fortunes appear to have revived. Great cities are generally associated with a process of outward movement and population decline, a process captured in the graphic term counter-urbanisation. London appears now to be charting a new course.
