Coming soon to a borough near you

The London you know and tolerate is changing fast. Get ready for a different skyline, floating hotels, new bridges, new piazzas, Tube cards with brains... and a Golden Jubilee.

BRIDGES

Those south-of-the-river jokes might soon become a thing of the past. The primary contender to bridge that gap is the Jubilee Bridge, the Thames' first covered bridge which will link the City and South Bank (near the Globe and Borough Market). The £14-million bridge will include four built-in viewing platforms and is due to be finished in November.

Hungerford Bridge, currently a favourite spot for muggers and graffiti artists, is getting an overhaul too. The footbridge, which joins Embankment to the South Bank, will be split into two 15ft-wide, well-lit bridges to deter criminals, and should be ready by late summer. And the Millennium Bridge - from St Paul's to Tate Modern - is set to reopen soon. It should have been de-wobbled (or lost its 'synchronous lateral excitation'). Shame. We rather liked those images of old ladies clinging on for dear life.

LEISURE

You wait a lifetime for a floating hotel to come to London - and then two come along at once. One is a Thirties mail ship (which will undergo a £34-million conversion) and the other a purpose-built liner. Both vessels will be moored at Docklands.

The prospect of a global slump doesn't seem to have discouraged developers from attempting to encourage Londoners' consumerism. As retailers cotton on to the fact that lots of high-salaried women work in the Square Mile, the competition to open shops heats up. Plans to open the area's first department store, a House of Fraser in King William Street, are under way, while a shopping centre and office space is planned for Paternoster Square, where the Stock Exchange is to be rehoused. Both projects are due for completion next year. Meanwhile, this Easter, a mezzanine level housing bars and restaurants will open at the redeveloped Royal Exchange.

Central London is still holding its own in the retail stakes. Selfridges has committed £300 million to a new Norman Foster-designed 12-storey glass extension on Oxford Street. If Westminster Council green-lights the plans this summer, the project should be completed by 2007. Plans include 100,000sq ft of shopping space, a public viewing gallery, and a hotel with a restaurant, spa and swimming pool.

And if all this construction makes you weary, worry not. The £10.5-million project to restore Battersea Park to its Victorian splendour is coming along nicely. The council is planting 300 new trees as well as building a river wall (in naturally coloured dark pink Scottish granite, in case you're interested). Let's just hope the park planners don't catch the retail bug and open a branch of Prada under the pagoda.

GOLDEN JUBILEE

London's most esteemed resident has reigned for 50 years. To celebrate, HM is giving her subjects the best Jubilee gift ever - an extra-long bank-holiday weekend. What great spin: just when royal popularity is waning, we'll all turn monarchist - at least from 1 June until it's back to work on 5 June - and patriotic, as the World Cup kicks off that weekend. If you're going underground, the Tube runs non-stop for 42 hours from 3 June to 5 June, but don't expect to see our Liz braving the Jubilee Line.

All those right royal celebrations will bring back memories of the Silver Jubilee in 1977: street parties, Union Jacks, the Queen's face on everything from mugs to knickers. This time round, Londoners can show some R-e-s-p-e-c-t in Buckingham Palace Gardens at BBC concerts on 1 and 3 June, the first with classical music, the other with Aretha Franklin and fireworks. Or you could sing songs of praise at churches all over town on 2 June, and enjoy more music in St George's Chapel, Windsor, as part of the String of Pearls Festival. The Festival also allows public access for the first time to Westminster Abbey's belfry and to Whitehall buildings such as the Cabinet and Foreign and Commonwealth Offices. And you can compare British Queens' dress sizes through the ages at an exhibition of royal wedding frocks at Kensington Palace. Rounding up the bank-holiday festivities, the Mall hosts a pageant on 4 June and there's a thanksgiving service at St Paul's.

Check out what your local borough is doing for the Jubilee - all have events. Westminster has a fair in Berkeley Square (21 to 23 June) with a concert by Courtney Pine, while Greenwich opens the Old Royal Naval College to the public for the first time. Now, if only the Queen could have a word upstairs about the weather.

For more information, see www.goldenjubilee.gov.uk

SPORT

With the World Cup running from 31 May to 30 June, there's absolutely no getting away from football. For starters, your local pub may well decide to open its doors at 6am on match days, so thirsty fans can enjoy an early-morning pint while watching the game. The eight-hour time difference between the UK and South Korea and Japan means matches will be broadcast here at 7am, 9am and noon. Schools will also have the option to start exams later than normal to allow students to watch the games. The date causing most concern among teenage football fans is 12 June, as GCSE, AS and A-level papers could clash with the national team's final first-round World Cup match. Expect a few 'Prince Harry' moments this summer - think drunken teenagers stumbling around pubs when they should be doing something more constructive.

In addition to worrying about how to deal with a major sporting event on the other side of the world, London's football fans will also be keeping an eye on developments closer to home. Fulham's plans for a new £70-million stadium at Craven Cottage have been approved, and work starts this summer. During its construction, the club will ground-share with QPR at Loftus Road. Things aren't running as smoothly further north. Stephen Byers has delayed Arsenal's move from Highbury to a new £250-million stadium nearby - if he calls for a public inquiry, it could delay the scheme by over two years. And although the general feeling is that Wembley is the preferred location for a new £715-million national stadium, Birmingham is still a candidate. The latest from the FA is that the association is keen for the Wembley scheme to go ahead but will have to reconsider in April if the correct funding isn't in place. In lay terms, that's a big, fat, Watch This Space.

TRANSPORT

Will the Tube be running on time? Hmmm, strangely, London Underground can't promise this. But it can promise a new type of ticket. Smartcards are set to replace paper tickets later this year. The cards will be credit-card sized, and passengers will be able to swipe them through wallets, bags and even pockets. Payment will be the same as before with season-ticket holders paying monthly or annually and more occasional passengers charging them up at machines. Eventually - how's this for technology? - passengers will even be able to recharge their cards over the phone. The scheme, starting in August, will be gently phased in so as not to confuse any Luddites. Anyone desperate for a glimpse of the future should visit St James's Park or Canada Water where sensor pads have already been added to the stations' barriers.

As for cars, London will know by mid-February whether Mayor Livingstone's controversial congestion charge will get the go-ahead. The charge looks increasingly likely, if only as a way to mark a concrete achievement in Ken's first mayoral term. If it happens, the traffic taxes will start in 2003. The aim is to reduce traffic inside the zone by 10 to 15 per cent and queues by 20 to 30 per cent. Motorists would be charged £5 a day to drive within the zone between 7am and 6.30pm on Mondays to Fridays. The proposed zone will be bounded by Euston Road, Pentonville Road, Tower Bridge, Elephant and Castle, Vauxhall Bridge Road, Park Lane and Marylebone Road.

And planes? Well, building will start this year on Terminal 5 - billed as Heathrow's biggest terminal - and should be completed by 2007. The government still hasn't decided on the highly contentious third runway. If it is built, however, it will probably be to the north of Heathrow. Areas that could be affected by noise pollution from new flight paths include Pimlico and Hammersmith. And while we're on the subject of foreign travel, the King's Cross Eurostar link probably won't be opening until 2007 - sorry, North London, you'll just have to wait.

THE SKYLINE

You can't have missed it: Sir Norman Foster is rebuilding London. He's finished City Hall - the Mayor moves in this summer. He's started work on the 'gherkin' skyscraper, for Swiss Re, that should be completed in 2004. Foster and Partners will also design offices on the site of Spitalfields market, extending the Square Mile to Tower Hamlets. Consumers of organic veg and hemp-sack clothing fret not - there will still be a market, it will just be on a smaller scale.

The other big news for the skyline is the 37-storey Heron skyscraper on Bishopsgate. We'll find out more later this year - if it goes ahead, the Heron will be the City's second-highest building after the NatWest Tower. Erm, and still no change on that old perennial Battersea Power Station.

RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS

2002 could mean the end of only being able to afford a flat in Hounslow. Or Cockfosters. Tokyo-style 'microflats' are coming to London, and the first batch of prefab apartments will be planted in a soon-to-be-decided location later this year. Each flat is 25sq m and will cost between £60,000 and £80,000. Anyone who fancies a sneak preview should catch Selfridges Microlife window installation. In pure Big Brother-style, Oxford Street voyeurs can watch two 'Micronauts' living in a specially constructed microflat until 1 February.

More avant-garde affordable housing will be available when the Isokon reopens in Belsize Park. When the super-cool Isokon was built in 1934, the Bauhaus-style block was one of the capital's most fashionable addresses - residents such as Agatha Christie, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth ate together in the communal dining rooms and drank in the in-house bar. After years of neglect, the Grade I-listed building has been tarted up and its new residents will move in later this year. Around 25 flats have been reserved for teachers working in the borough; others will either be rented to low-income households or sold as one-bedroom apartments.

Tower Hamlets is also getting a makeover - the borough will receive a whopping 40 per cent of all London funding this year. One exciting project is the Millennium Quarter on the Isle of Dogs, south of Canary Wharf. The development is a mix of residential and office buildings and it is hoped it will bring 2,000 new homes (500 of which will be affordable) and 20,000 new jobs to the area, along with a refurbished South Quay DLR station. Building starts later this year.

HIGH AND LOW CULTURE

Will Trafalgar Square eventually be to Londoners what Times Square is to New Yorkers? The Mayor certainly hopes so. Ken has big plans to make the area the venue for London's free concerts as well as existing events like St Patrick's Day and the Chinese New Year. Work on the pedestrianisation of the north side from the National Gallery has already started and will finish early in 2003. The latest news on the forth plinth is... there is no news at all. There are no plans for anything permanent; instead, there will be a succession of temporary installations because, according to the GLA, the public enjoys the element of surprise.

Anyone after a performance on a slightly smaller scale should head to the National Theatre where great innovation is afoot. From May until September, the Lyttelton is being chopped into two spaces - one will be curved around an extended stage while the other is planned as a loft space. Both will be showing new plays.

We've also got a handful of new museums to look forward to. The Docklands Museum opens later this spring after 23 years of collaboration between curators and archaeologists. The Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace reopens in May and will house the Royal Collection - furniture, porcelain and work by Michelangelo, Raphael and Gainsborough, among others. Indeed, the gallery's complete refurbishment is described as the most significant addition to the Palace in 150 years.

Most exciting of all, (well for the fashionista lurking in every one of us) is the Fashion and Textile Museum in SE1. The museum is essentially a homage to British fashion design. It's overseen by Zandra Rhodes and designed by Mexican architect Ricardo Legoretta, so expect lots of colour. And lots of 'Bermondsey-is-the-new-Hoxton' declarations when it opens in September: you have been warned.