In the 1990s – little remarked on at first – Greater London’s population began to grow again. Eventually, the GLC fell foul of national government and was abolished in 1986 1985 – indicative perhaps of a wider slump in the city’s fortunes and reputation. Nevertheless, Greater London’s population declined. Greater London was subdivided into 32 boroughs, bar the ancient City in the historic centre. It was to be governed by the Greater London Council (GLC), swallowing chunks of the home counties, replacing London County Council, and dissolving the ancient county of Middlesex. Local government structures evolved in response, and in 1965 the city’s boundaries expanded with the creation of Greater London. These changes built a discontinuous megacity in southeast England with the capital at its heart. In the decades that followed, certain factors – including slum clearances, the growth of the train network, mass car ownership, industrial and regional policy, and rising living standards – combined to redistribute London’s population to the burgeoning suburbs and then to the home counties beyond. The war’s aftermath, however, also had other profound impacts – not least the creation of the welfare state and the publication of the Abercrombie Plan. Until recently, the most dramatic change in London’s fortunes had come with the death and destruction of the Blitz. For around 100 years, during the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth, London was the largest city in the world. Although population size is perhaps the crudest measure of a city’s success, London was indisputably the primary global urban centre for a significant portion of its history.
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