In autumn 2012 I announced my intention to seek the Labour selection to stand as the party’s London Mayoral candidate in 2016 – a full four years before the election.

I did this because I believe things in London have to change and the extent of those changes demands long-term planning and thinking, along with dialogue with people and communities.

I have been a member of the Labour Party for most of my adult life, apart from a brief spell during the Iraq war. The Labour Party is, politically, my natural home. But we must ensure the Labour Party remains a bottom up movement. This is why I have spent the past two years visiting constituency Labour parties all over London to listen to grassroots members to find out what they think a London Mayor should be and do.

I am passionate about London and have lived here my whole life, apart from three years at Warwick University. I would never live anywhere else. But my – and your – London is changing in a way none of us like. It is becoming the preserve of the rich and privileged, while ordinary people are forced further and further out by soaring rents and rising prices. The people who make London vibrant and diverse, and those who keep it running, can no longer afford to live here.

And despite the congestion charge, London is still too geared towards cars, creating dirty air and streets that are safer for vehicles than for cyclists and pedestrians. I know this because I have travelled around London by bus and Tube and bicycle my whole life.

So the issues that give me most concern are housing and transport – and these are areas in which I have the greatest expertise. They are also the areas over which a London Mayor holds most sway.

In my twenties I worked for the housing charity Shelter and I have been writing about and commentating on transport for most of my working life. My book Down the Tube is the only definitive work on the public private partnership that was disastrous for the Underground. I have written and campaigned against rail privatisation extensively for the past 20 years. I am also opposed to HS2, on the grounds that it is a grand project attractive to glory-hunting politicians but a massively expensive idea that means little to ordinary people – and will devastate parts of north London.

I am often asked to give talks in Europe and beyond, and in so doing I have observed how far London now lags behind in terms of its approach to the future of cities. Even New York now acknowledges that streets are for living in, not just thoroughfares for traffic. Its new mayor, Bill de Blasio, has a zero tolerance policy towards road deaths. De Blasio is the type of new and visionary leader our cities need - as, closer to home, is the mayor of Bristol, George Ferguson.

As for my personal life, I play cricket and tennis badly and run slowly. And I am a lifelong Queens Park Rangers fan. I grew up in west London with an absent father and the caretaker at our block of flats stepped into the breach and introduced me to the gritty world of third division football when I was eight. I was instantly hooked. I have two daughters, both educated at local schools, three step-children and a step-grandson. I live in Holloway with my partner, Deborah Maby.