London's hidden acres

Is there any building land left in London? If you thought the big developers had already snapped up and built on every prime site in the capital, you would be wrong. Surprisingly, there is still plenty of land left to be rescued, especially in east and south-east London around the Greenwich Peninsula, Stratford, the Royal Docks and Barking Creek. If you are a north Londoner who won't go east of Islington, then look west to Wembley, or Cricklewood or in Islington itself, at Arsenal.

Figures produced for Homes & Property by monitors London Residential Research and by the Greater London Authority show that the capital's 10 largest available sites collectively have room for more than 70,000 new homes on 545 hectares of land. To put that in context, the vast derelict railway lands around King's Cross run to a mere 54 hectares.

Mayor Ken Livingstone gave the go-ahead last month to developers to start work on the 77-hectare area around the Dome on the Greenwich Peninsula. The site is the second-largest tract of development land in London in terms of the numbers of homes it will produce, with 10,000 proposed new properties.

Suggestions that there is a shortage of building land in London are "a complete myth", according to Geoff Marsh of London Residential Research. "There's loads of land. It's everywhere there is a single-storey building waiting to have a few floors put on top. The problems are lack of imagination, lack of nous, 'planning gain' requirements that are too onerous and the lack of infrastructure, such as Tube stations or shops."

In his draft London Plan, the Mayor has imposed tough minimum targets on the 33 boroughs, ordering them to build between them at least 23,000 new homes a year until 2006. Of these, at least 10,000 must be affordable.

This week, we look at where those homes are likely to be built. Next week, we examine London's transport and environmental-improvement programmes.