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London must develop the urban equivalents of new towns around its transport hubs in order to help meet the capital’s housing needs, one of the UK’s leading geographers has told delegates at our London event.

In a wide-ranging talk at the London Property Club, Oxford University Professor of Economic Geography Danny Dorling called for denser development around the capital’s transport hubs.

“In the same way we built new towns in the Seventies like Milton Keynes that were very successful, we need to build the equivalents of new towns in London that are not dependent on the car,” he said, adding that by providing more homes in London would cut the need for “ever longer” commuting distances. [emaillocker id=”71749″]

The UK’s reliance on home ownership also fuels commuting by encouraging people to stay put when they get a new job, Dorling said: “You get the 25-year mortgage, stay in the house, get another job and just commute further.”

He added that the greater renting options in many European countries means that it easier for people to move closer to their workplaces.

But housing affordability problems are not confined to London, Dorling said, pointing out that average house prices are 17 times average salaries in his home city of Oxford.

He said: “You have to go to San Francisco to find somewhere as expensive as Oxford. We have 40,000 people drive over our green belt every day, which is the least ‘green’ green belt in the history of the planet in terms of generating pollution.”

As a result, the “bottom end” of the Oxford housing market has disappeared with even “dodgy flats” now rented out to well heeled “trustafarian” post graduate students, pushing groups like drug addicts onto the streets.

This increased housing inequality had been fuelled by the right to buy for council housing which means that single people have replaced families in many former local authority homes, Dorling said.

But while council housing had been a good solution in the post-war era it no longer suited the needs of today’s youngsters, he said: “We need to take into account that half of young people have gone to university so they need control of their housing.”

And Dorling criticised the opposition for failing to develop innovative housing policy proposals: “The real tragedy is that we have no forward thinking, not a single new idea from Labour.”

But the market wouldn’t solve the problem on its own, he said: “In Oxford, we will get six bed houses on the edge of the city which isn’t going to help with the housing crisis.” [/emaillocker]