It's time for some blue sky thinking, Boris

Mayors and architecture go together like bishops and actresses, or British politicians and Russian magnates. There is a mutual, and mutually dangerous, attraction. Yuri Luzhkov, mayor of Moscow for a never-ending term, threw his weight behind the rebuilding of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour that had been destroyed by Stalin. Bertrand Delanoë, mayor of Paris, created the Paris Plage, the beach formed each summer beside the Seine. Successive mayors of Barcelona built a worldwide reputation for beautifying their streets and squares, until Juan Clos blew it with the 2004 Universal Forum of Cultures, a pompous Dome-like waterfront venture that provoked protesters into storming it on home-made rafts.

Boris Johnson has not yet proposed anything equivalent, not the reconstruction of the old house-filled London Bridge, nor a return to 17th-century ice fairs. His most tangible pledge so far has been for more drinking fountains, for which a design competition is currently being planned. The London Mayor lacks the power and funds to build megalomaniacal monuments. He is, however, the single most important person in London's planning system thanks to powers awarded by the Labour Government to (it intended) Ken Livingstone, only for them to end up in Boris's Tory palms.

This gives him an exceptional opportunity. Combined with the lull in property development which gives time to work things out before the cranes start whirring again and the fact that Livingstone had already put a lot of work into planning and architecture, the Johnson mayoralty has the means to create and carry out policies for making London a genuinely better more beautiful, more civil, better functioning place. He also has £4billion to spend on housing, while the delivery of the Olympic legacy is his direct responsibility.

The question is what he is going to do with these opportunities.

There is no evidence that Boris had given much thought to the planning of London until the latter stages of the election campaign. City Hall insiders claim that even when he became Mayor, he still needed to be told the full extent of his power to refuse and allow planning permissions across the capital. Now he has grasped it, he may not be quite so willing to hand it all to the boroughs.

He did, though, have views on architecture and planning. In 2006 he declared that government should scrap modern planning regulations "so that people can do what the hell they want" and architects should bring back the "gorgons, acroteria and classical traditions" of Ancient Greece. At the same time he attacked the "half-hearted" "pastiche classicism" of Quinlan Terry, who is one of Prince Charles's favourite architects. He also said that "I hate bloody brick" and attacked "ghastly conformism".

By the time he was elected, these views had been shaped into something more mayoral-sounding: more power to the boroughs to make their own decisions, a limiting of tall buildings to clusters where they were already (such as the City, Canary Wharf and Croydon), more trees and more attention to the outer zones of the city.

He also abolished Livingstone's rarely -realised target of achieving 50 per cent affordable housing in new developments, instead focusing on achieving a certain number: 51,000 homes in three years. He appointed Sir Simon Milton, former leader of Westminster City Council, as Deputy Mayor Policy and Planning. Despite his hatred of regulations he then announced that he would reintroduce the old Parker Morris standards, rules abolished by Margaret Thatcher that had set minimum sizes for rooms and homes. It was a civilised idea but he had to backtrack in the face of protests from housebuilders that times were sufficiently hard for them without their having to invest in making homes that were actually decent. The rules, Johnson explained, would only apply to affordable housing, for which space standards were, in fact, already in place.

He axed Livingstone's plan to part-pedestrianise Parliament Square, objecting to the lack of grass in the proposals, and the effects on traffic. That he will be more pro-car and anti-bus than Ken is confirmed by his throwing out a bus-friendly proposal for a roundabout in Elephant and Castle.

Now he has also formally laid to rest Livingstone's plan to create 100 new public spaces, of which only five have been delivered. Instead he will be introducing a new scheme whereby boroughs will be invited to propose public space projects and the Mayor will give financial support to what he and his advisers think are the best of them.

He is also pledging 10,000 new street trees (down from the one million promised but not delivered by Ken) and the modest sum of £6million to improve parks. He has produced a well-received Climate Change Adaptation Plan, which according to Simon Milton, whose job is to advise Johnson on planning issues, replaces "the stunts and gimmicks" of Livingstone's green policies with "real return". It favours the dull but effective, such as roof insulation, over the glamorous but marginal, such as solar panels.

A housing strategy, setting out how he will spend his £4 billion on housing, is coming soon and he will shortly be announcing his Design Advisory Panel, the group of eminences who will advise him on architecture. It is now definite that the architect Sir Terry Farrell will be his principal architectural adviser, as has long been rumoured. Lord Rogers, who advised Livingstone, will still be around though how this will be work remains to be seen: Rogers is not usually one to play second fiddle.

Nor has the outspoken brick-hater of 2006 gone away. According to Milton, Johnson "wants to see buildings embellished". He is "fed up with bland, boring, box-like architecture". These need not all be Grecian, however: "He has expressed enthusiasm for one or two schemes that are very modern."

What all this is amounts to so far is a series of good intentions combined with a certain amount of common sense and outbreaks of pure personal prejudice. There have been some bumps, most notably in Johnson's switch from opposing the proposed "Three Sisters" towers in Waterloo to waving them through. There have also been dull but necessary rearrangements of staff and departments. Those who have worked with both this administration and the last say the new culture is "a bit calmer" and "more relaxed", less "bullying" and "gung- ho". The proposed development at Potters Fields next to City Hall, formerly a triangle of conflict between Livingstone, Southwark council, and the developers Berkeley Homes, is proceeding more amicably.

From this solid start the Johnson regime could go in two directions. It could continue to issue a series of more or less intelligent strategies combined with the translation into policy of the Mayor's more or less astute gut feelings. Or it could do better and form strategies and instincts into a coherent idea for making London a more civilised city.

Tall buildings are a case in point. At present most plans for towers in sensitive locations end up in a public inquiry, where arcane discussions take place as to what is "good design" a waste of time that benefits no one but lawyers and consultants. As his wobble over the Waterloo Towers showed, the Mayor is himself not sure about what he wants.

But a clear definition of those places where towers are and are not acceptable would spare all this agony and lead to a less ragged skyline. The fact that no one will be rushing to build high in the next few years gives the chance for such a definition to be made. It is on matters like this that Johnson can most distinguish himself from the former Mayor, who was only too happy to shoot subjective judgments from the hip. He can also distance himself from the former more flippant Boris Johnson and prove that he really has transformed himself from columnist to political leader.