Does starting a family have to end the fun of city centre living? For many it has and still does.

What makes a great city? Is it the buildings? The cafés and restaurants that sit within them? Is it the history of a place – the music, the sporting venues, the cultural identity? Is it the transport links, to get people in, and equally to get people out, to the surrounding landscape and connected towns and villages? Is it the homes and businesses? The politics? The passion?

Which of our major cities has the greatest projected requirement to accommodate homes and jobs over the next 20 plus years? It will come as no great surprise that the answer is London.

Taking population growth as the principal driver, the Capital is required to accommodate twice as many people as presently reside in Manchester by 2024[1].

Yet, whereas Manchester has recently announced plans to release up to 4,900 hectares of Green Belt land to accommodate sustainable patterns of growth to sit alongside ambitious urban regeneration plans[2], London has resolutely refused to consider incursions into its hinterland. Why is that, and how can it be justified? The answer to the former is a mix of politics and due process. The answer to the latter is that it can – provided one backs the stick, rather than the carrot, approach to spatial planning.

There is presently much focus on the Northern Powerhouse and the ‘Midland Engine Room’, especially with the emergence of combined authorities for both Greater Manchester the West Midlands.