How much will Forest City cost, and who pays for it?

Planning is funded entirely by private investors, motivated by two things: fixing Britain, and making a return on their money. If the project never gets approved, they lose their money, not you.

Forest City's infrastructure will cost up to £45 billion over 30 years, paid for by the city itself rather than the taxpayer. The rail, metro, roads, four hospitals, hundreds of schools, water, power and fibre have all been costed line by line by area experts.

The city pays for itself the same way Canary Wharf and Milton Keynes did: by capturing the value of the land it creates. A field is worth a few thousand pounds an acre; the same acre in a city centre is worth millions. That uplift—which normally goes to landowners and speculators—instead funds the city. Homes, meanwhile, pay for themselves, each one sold as it's built.