It’s July 2036. London is in the middle of its fourth consecutive day above 40C. Before leaving for work, you automatically lower your external shutters and sling a rechargeable fan around your neck. Your phone suggests a slightly longer walking route than usual — but it’s almost entirely shaded. At the Tube station, you refill your water bottle before boarding an air-conditioned Piccadilly line train. At lunchtime, children splash through fountains in Paternoster Square while office workers cool off beneath newly planted plane trees. A friend texts: “Fancy a dip after work?” He’s not suggesting the lido. He’s talking about the wild swimming ponds at East London Waterworks Park in Waltham Forest.
The picture we paint here might sound fanciful. But when we asked the people redesigning London’s future — from City Hall and the London Fire Brigade to architects, engineers and climate scientists — to imagine a 40C week 10 years from now, they described a capital that looks and lives rather differently. Streets are shadier. Homes are designed to keep heat out rather than trap it in. Water is everywhere. And Londoners themselves are beginning to adapt, changing the way they travel, work and cool off.
