The city went into decline after World War Two, and has taken decades to recover. H/T to Barney Stringer, via CityMetric.

The previous record, set in 1939, was 8.615 million and may have already been passed but in any case will have been met by the end of February, according to data from the GLA.

London's population had dropped to as low as 6.6 million in the 1970s and 1980s. Incredibly, Britain's capital lost a quarter of its population over fifty years.

Barney Stringer, director of the Quod planning consultancy, wrote on his blog this week that London lost "the equivalent of Birmingham, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast" as people made their way out of the city and to surrounding counties.

But, he says:

So, London is back to its peak, and while it has changed in so many ways, it faces some of the same challenges. Just like 75 years ago we have extraordinarily fast population growth with commuting patterns and housing pressure spilling way beyond the city's boundaries.

Last time we responded by choking off that growth and imposing 50 years of decline. What do we choose this time? Can we invest and support growth?