Will Mike and Boris find common ground?

Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire mayor of New York, flies into London today for a pow-wow with Boris Johnson. Although the idea is that he will give his London counterpart advice about running the capital -  Bloomberg, founder of the financial news agency of the same name, has said he will always be on the "other end of the line" – it may not be all one-way traffic.

Bloomberg is currently embroiled in a fearful row over the development of Washington Square in New York's Greenwich Village. He will probably not know that this is a piece of American territory Johnson knows all too well, it being where young Boris spent many a care-free vacation with his mother Charlotte Johnson Wahl, at her apartment on the square.

Washington Square used to be the place where you could buy any drug known to man, before it was cleaned up by Bloomberg's predecessor, Rudy Giuliani, in the 1990s. Now it is one of the mayor's hottest potatoes. There are already five ongoing legal actions over the proposed $16m development, which includes enlarging the existing peripheral fence, reducing the size of the park's central plaza, transforming its famous fountain and cutting down dozens of mature trees.

Meanwhile, Johnson has made two new additions to his team. Former BBC reporter Guta Harri, whom the mayor met at Oxford, will be his head of communications. And Sunday Telegraph editor Patience Wheatcroft will head up a team of “sleaze-busters” charged with ending mismanagement at City Hall. ·