> Sabotaging London won't make the rest of the UK better - it will just mean less tax money available to subsidise the rest of the country. If you stop companies from expanding in London they won't go to Sheffield or Birmingham - they'll go to Amsterdam or Frankfurt or Paris.
It's not about sabotaging London, but about return on investment. It doesn't matter that companies for which going to Amsterdam, Frankfurt or Paris is an option won't go to Sheffield or Birmingham - if you draw companies that can go elsewhere in the UK, and often would love to, out to the regions, then there's plenty of capacity for those who desperately prefer London. I used to work in VC, and just the sheer number of companies founded outside of London that moved to London not because they wanted to but because they didn't see it as viable to stay in the regions was depressing. Apart from access to capital, a big driver for that was smaller commutable regions. WFH helps, but upgrading internal links within the regions would do even more.
> They're trying that up to a point. Stratford has worked pretty well, and they're going to apply the same playbook at Old Oak Common. Croydon might be next on the list. But of course at the rate the UK builds anything that wil be what, 2060 before anything is done.
Croydon town centre is extremely well connected already, and the town centre is filling up with highrises, w/several over 40 floors so far and one w/planning permission for 75. But the problem isn't for these places, but the places that could have better connections to places set further out from the centre of London to draw demand further out to lines that are poorly utilised.
E.g. places like Epsom and Sutton and smaller stations in between, or any of the train stations in Croydon not on one of the direct lines to London (West, East, South Croydon and the Purley stations are well served as is. E.g. put direct trains in places at commuter frequencies between Croydon and Guildford via Epsom, and you have a whole range stations that suddenly form a much more viable commuter pool and with capacity for increased building density, and makes several locations along the route more attractive to businesses that might otherwise pull further in. There are a lot of routes like that surrounding London.