Part One focuses on context and concept; what makes the London Plan a public document and what are the conditions of its publicness. Chapter 1 reviews the difficulties of strategic planning in London and discusses the instrumentality and fragility of the London Plan in the city’s spatial development—a ‘crucial’ but ‘weak’ document beset by London’s unique metropolitan governance structure and entangled with narratives of growth and global city since the Greater London Authority’s formation in 2000. Chapter 2 considers the use of the word ‘public’ in planning policy text and in Mayor Khan’s vision to make London a ‘city for all’, and how a public of all Londoners has been imagined to take part in shaping London’s future. Chapter 3 situates the London Plan against the backdrop of local and national changes to public participation since the 1960s when the term was first conceived, in relation to the invitation for the public to ‘have a say’ in the capital’s urban change, and the struggle to do so.