Like other booming cities, including New York, London has thrived amid globalisation. It is growing by 100,000 new residents a year. However, if London has given striving people plenty of reasons to come, it has done a poor job of housing them. The median price of a London home has tripled over the past two decades. Since 2001 the disposable income of people renting property has fallen by 30 per cent as a result. Businesses are worried too. Commercial property in central London is twice as expensive as in New York. Productivity has begun to slow as promising firms are forced out. Overpriced property is costing London the economic and human diversity on which its prosperity depends.