London Mayor Boris Johnson said he will submit plans to close the British capital's Heathrow Airport on the grounds that it's too noisy and replace it with a four-runway hub in one of three locations east or north of the city.
The government could buy Heathrow for about £15 billion ($22 billion) and use the 1,220-hectare site to build 100,000 homes for as many as 250,000 people, creating an entirely new borough that would help ease a national housing shortage, the mayor said Monday.
Johnson said Europe's busiest airport should be replaced with a hub at one of two undeveloped sites in the Thames estuary or at an expanded Stansted Airport 55 km north of London. The mayor said he will submit the proposals to the state-appointed Davies Commission on British airport capacity later this week.
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