London commuter belt
The
London commuter belt is the name given to the built-up area surrounding and running into
Greater London, but not administered as part of it. The boundaries are not fixed and tend to rise as travel speeds increase, and could currently be considered to stretch as far as
Reading,
Guildford, and
Milton Keynes, but is generally considered to include
Most of the undeveloped parts of this area lies within a designated Metropolitan
green belt so that further significant development is generally resisted by District Councils backed by the Planning Inspectorate. It was expected that had this policy not been adopted during the 1940s and 1950s the area that the commuter belt covers would have been fully urbanized by about 1980, and the boundaries of
Greater London might well have been more extensive. The approval of a second runway at Stansted Airport or the tendering of domestic train services along the international railway being built between Stratford and Ashford can be confidently expected to pull the area's limits outwards in north easterly and south easterly directions (respectively) bringing greater symmetry to the commuter belt as seen from above.