Mass transit is good for business, former London mayor says

DUBAI // Ken Livingstone, London's occasionally controversial but always colourful former mayor, has some advice for Dubai and Abu Dhabi: get rid of the cars. "Huge financial centres" such as Dubai cannot rely on private cars for transport, said the architect of London's congestion charge, speaking yesterday in Dubai as chairman of the World Architecture Congress, a programme running alongside Cityscape. "They need to have public transportation," he said. "Dubai must recognise a modern financial district requires a majority of workers to use public transport."

Cities around the world, he said, were scrambling to get residents out of their cars and, if Dubai and Abu Dhabi were serious about becoming important global cities, they must do the same. Financial centres thrive on deal-making, which in turn depends on people sitting face-to-face, not speaking on the telephone from halfway across the planet. That way, he said, "you can tell if they're lying". Because of the serious need for personal interaction, financial cities must be designed in such a way that individual mobility was made easy, transit was accessible - and the car could not be the dominant form of transport.

Wildly unpopular at the outset, London's congestion charge reduced traffic in the heart of London by about 30 per cent within months of being implemented. When he introduced the charge, Mr Livingstone was warned by colleagues and commentators that he was committing political suicide, but shortly after the charge was put into effect he was easily re-elected. Mr Livingstone said a congestion charge for the UAE would be premature and could be applied only after an extensive public transit system had been established. And the best place for this, he said - perhaps not having noticed the advanced metro network taking shape across the city - was underground.

"First you put in the underground railways," he said. "Then you put in a congestion charge." Transport was not the only thing Mr Livingstone felt would do well underground in the UAE. The urban landscapes of Dubai and, to a lesser extent, Abu Dhabi, are dominated by tall buildings and, although high density was generally considered a smart growth tactic in cities, Mr Livingstone said such development could come at the expense of public spaces.

He suggested that, because of the extreme heat in the region, the city should go underground. "It's not too late for cities like Dubai to look to an underground system," he said. "Because if you have a city that is unpleasant to live in, people won't want to live there." City planners and administrators in the UAE, he said, have the advantage of working within a political system far freer-flowing than the one with which he had had to deal with in London. "I'd rather do it quicker with a little less participation," he said, laughing.

Mr Livingstone was recently appointed adviser to the urban planning department in Caracas, Venezuela. Asked if he would enjoy filling the same role for Dubai, he replied: "I'd be delighted!" [e-mail]