Should we turn all those empty offices into homes?

Can we ease the housing crisis by moving in to central London?

Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images

Back in May of last year we asked the question ‘Is the Square Mile about to become bohemian party central?’.

What prompted that question was the City of London Corporation’s ‘Future City’ report, a slightly premature “post-pandemic five-year recovery plan,” which included the idea to create 1,500 new homes by 2030, many of them coming from converted office blocks.

At the time we noted that nobody really wants to live in the Square Mile, but the Corporation had already considered this and was planning to get round it by introducing incredible incentives like “all-night festivals” and… erm, e-scooters.

We are now a year into that five year plan and there’s been zero news about how it’s going. If we were being cynical we might say that’s because nothing has actually happened. But last week something else happened: the Centre For London produced their Remixing Central London report, which takes a slightly more thorough look at what wouldbe needed “to ensure a s…