About 15 years ago I did a drawing titled  based on studies of how London could grow as a polycentric metropolis with higher degrees of connectivity. This research clarified to me how London could expand eastwards – more or less what is happening now with the Olympic Games as the catalyst.It is very interesting to see it becoming a reality. I think one of the great challenges is the fundamental restructuring away from the "Fordist" paradigm of an industrial mass society towards a society with much greater degrees of complexity and dynamism in people's lives. So hybrid mixed-used buildings have become very interesting. There also needs to be a further shift away from zoning – you live here, work there and play somewhere else. By layering all these uses together, in the same zone, it completely changes the way we look at cities.  In 1989 there was no city government planning anything, it was all pretty haphazard. Broadly, No one in 1989 realised the long-term impact of deregulation was going to be so dramatic for the financial sector. There was an assumption of slow decline. Now, we've got the London Plan, which I devised and which came into force in February 2004, which is a strategy through to 2025. Given the length of time it takes to get things done, the only big question mark now is the transport projects like Crossrail – they depend on the outcome of the next general election: whether you get a government who's prepared to back that sort of investment. London might not grow as well as it should, it might not be as environmental a city as it should be, but I don't think anyone's going to see London as a failure.  There will be serious talk of bringing back a riverbus service for the Thames. There will be more white ghost-bicycles than any other kind, cycling being compulsory for those who want access to the National Health Service . Privileged lanes for VIP non-participants will have expanded and public lanes shrunk. Tickets will be at a premium for permanent show trials, inquiries into inquiries, after terrorist outrages and botched judicial executions. Film, television and other forms of electronic communication will happen on fingernail-size screens and be without content, other than re-runs of  . Locality won't exist, the slab or vertical stack being the universal form. West Ham FC will debate a move into the part-demolished Olympic stadium. The late Ken Livingstone, in computer-generated form, fresh from his triumph in  , will be re-elected as mayor.  The key thing is that the population of London will have risen to around 9m which is well above its previous highest level, and there will be an even bigger concentration of economic activity than now. London's capacity to attract people from all over the world – rich Americans and Europeans to asylum seekers – will continue. So by 2030 London will be a city that is over 40% overseas-born, even higher than it is now. There will be a similar percentage for the non-white population, so it will be even more cosmopolitan than it is today. In a curious way this cosmpolitan-ness and the tolerance that goes with it becomes a self-reinforcing factor, so it becomes even more attractive to people who are footloose, international and often talented. The skyline will probably have even more towers on it, it will probably be a city which has had to tackle congestion more comprehensively by then. What there will certainly be is a greater number of electric vehicles: by then small, silent electric vehicles will be much greater in number and there will be many fewer noisy, dirty, big vehicles of the kind we accept as normal today. we'll look back on the streets today and wonder how it was possible to tolerate the diesel-driven big vehicles: there'll be pressure to improve the air and environment, that's for sure. There's no evidence thus far of any society getting away from railways, especially when they're all built. The one thing I don't think there will be a move away from is working in city centres, or in the centre of London, but for many years there have been prophets who think that eventually people because of electronic communication will be able to work from home and visit the city centre occasionally; I think that analysis is wrong: partly because many people want to go to work, they enjoy the social element. Outer London, the bit that most people live in but people outside London don't know so well, will benefit: partly as a result of the population growth but also due to the Olympic development in the east. I think the big question is what happens to other parts of London, particularly south London where economic prospects have always been more challenged.  Fashion shows becoming live will be increasingly popular - that's going to take off and in twenty year's time should be well-established. It's allowing two things: first it allows the consumer to see it as soon as it hits the catwalk, and then through sites like netaporter.com you can buy the clothes before they get to the shops, so that's changing the whole way people consume fashion and the way they see it. We're seeing the embryonic form of a new medium happening now. People are living their lives through their mobile phones and laptops. In terms of what people will be wearing it depends on which society-changing events you get between now and then. Any form of civil unrest on a large scale or wars, influence fashion. You really have to start looking at politics: what clothes people wear is dependent on what their role in society is. Fashion is unpredictable, as events are. I'd like to see the parameters of what we consider beauty completely enlarged: we're really only presented with one version of how women should look at the moment and that's really quite shocking. I hope that we'll no longer tolerate being shown images of ourselves in such narrow parameters.  Food growing in the city will be commonplace: oil shocks and a growing awareness of food security will have encouraged people to grow their own. Rooftops and spare places will be full of vegetables: not, obviously, enough to feed the city but enough to reconnect people to food and make them more resilient and more aware of where food comes from. A much higher percentage of our food will come from farms around London with a lessening of dependency on foreign imports. Oil prices and water shortages will make this essential. We will have electric chargers across the city and electric vehicles will be commonplace. Biking will have increased dramatically – and proper bike super-highways will allow Londoners to commute across the city. Food co-ops will be common and waste will be used for power and not go to landfill. Recycling will be second nature and all homes will have smart meters, both for electricity and water usage. It won't be an age of austerity but it will be an age of watchfulness.
What will Britain's capital city look like in 20 years' time. What technological, social or environmental changes will most shape our future?