The mayor's London Plan, which was published on Tuesday, envisages a city split into five development zones. These are intended to bridge the gap between the Greater London Authority's strategic plan for the entire city and the 33 borough councils, each of which has its own unitary development plan.
The zones are to be called North, South, East, West and Central, and each are focused on key "corridors" where regeneration is most needed.
The North centres on the corridor running from London to Stansted-Cambridge, the South follows the Wandle Valley, especially around Croydon, the "Western Wedge" centres on Heathrow and Wembley and the eastern corridor focuses on the Thames Gateway.
The plan predicts that the population of Greater London will increase 800,000 by 2016. Livingstone calculates that the target for housebuilding in London will have to rise by one-third to 30,000 a year to cope with the increase.
The five frameworks will specify where jobs can be created and homes sited, and provide detailed guidelines on how areas can be regenerated. The planners will focus on two classes of district: "opportunity areas" and "areas for intensification".
The 28 opportunity areas will each accommodate about 5000 extra jobs and 2500 homes. They will include Cricklewood–Brent Cross in north London, the Greenwich peninsula in south-east London and Stratford in the east.
The 14 areas for intensification, which are mostly around suburban town centres and key transport interchanges such as Euston, Victoria and Willesden Junction, are seen as districts with potential for higher-density development.
Deputy mayor Nicky Gavron said that increasing the density of development in the two kinds of area would enable Livingstone's targets to be met. She said: "Most town centres have good transport interchanges where you can co-locate."
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