National Parks and National Park Cities

National Parks were designated to protect some of the world’s most loved landscapes from being eaten away by industrial and housing development. But Britain’s National Parks are exploited by intensive agriculture and sucked dry of their water for neighbouring cities. They sustain non-native invasive species and unlike National Parks elsewhere in the world, they are not ‘natural parks’. A movement is emerging with the aim of developing Greater London as the world’s first National Park City. But is there any significant environmental advantage to this and would London benefit from becoming one?