The London Plan is the Mayor of London’s flagship policy document, a crucial blueprint for the UK capital city’s strategic spatial development over the long-term. It is a document of great public consequence, subject to statutory calls for public participation, examination in public and publication. In preparing the draft plan, the Greater London Authority makes it available—open to all—for public comment on the proposals for how London’s future should take shape. However, according to Mayor Sadiq Khan in the foreword to his 2021 plan, not many Londoners know about it. Yet, all were invited to ‘have a say’ on the 2017 draft for consultation. Given the lack of awareness, what does it mean for the London Plan to be a public document? Who is the public that gets involved? How, where, when, or for whom is the plan public?

This practical research project attends to the public(s) of the London Plan 2021. From my perspective as a communication designer, it raises questions about the communication and design of the document, and sheds light on the complexities and contradictions of its publicness, addressing a gap in scholarship on the conceptualisation and role of ‘the public’ in shaping the plan. The project seeks to better understand the relationship between public-making, plan-making and policy-making in London. It takes up the word ‘public’ and follows it around, each chapter focusing on one form or format of public. Through a combination of documentation, policy review, interviews, participant observations, graphic design experiments and a design proposal for a London Plan Public Library, the research pays attention to the public-making practices of plan writers, editors, readers and respondents, and the ways in which they produce and circulate text. In so doing, the thesis situates the London Plan as a material, discursive site at which a public of multiple publics forms, briefly bound together by the activities and duration of the draft review processes. Through hyper attention paid to hypertext, some but not all Londoners participate. ‘Hyper’ means to go above and beyond—to exceed the normal bounds. The public(s) of the London Plan are ‘hyper-textual’ and ‘hyper-attentive.’