London Mayor Boris Johnson: ‘Let's melt down the railings to make bicycles'‏

"Let's melt down the railings to make bicycles"
London Mayor Boris Johnson interviewed in The Spectator.

--- "When you close your eyes and imagine your Utopian London, what does it look
like?


I see a new world of shared space, where the endless black railings are melted down to make bicycles, and I see happy pelotons of cyclists scudding through the streets, dappled with the light filtering through some of the 15,000 trees we are already planting; and I see pavements levelled to create beautiful urban realm projects across town, starting with Exhibition Road and Oxford Circus; and I see chewing gum magically vanishing thanks to the use of a new hydrophilic agent in the recipe, and the pollution disappearing from our nostrils thanks to the introduction not just of cycle-hire schemes, but also of a new generation of low-carbon and electric vehicles, and over the brow of the hill by as early as the end of 2011 I see a cleaner, greener, lighter version of the Routemaster bus, to say nothing of the growing fleets of catamarans that are plying the river, and which are already accepting the Oyster Card.
I see a London where developers are no longer building rabbit hutches, but are obliged to make rooms according to the standard of Parker Morris plus 10 per cent, and where architects rediscover an interest in ornament, and beauty, and once again create domestic architecture with a distinctive London vernacular rather than all-purpose Euro-flats."....

Q: Does power corrupt?
A: Power reveals


http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/3557501/lets-melt-down-the-railings-to-make-bicycles.thtml