The next US president must improve America's car-dominated cities by levying London-style congestion charges and cracking down on sprawl, British researchers said yesterday.

Barack Obama or John McCain must end eight years of "laissez faire" urban policy under the Bush administration and take on America's car-loving public, employing vehicle charging in places such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, says a joint report by the UK's Centre for Cities think-tank and the US Brookings Institution.

It urges a new incumbent of the White House to emulate policies that have been credited with improving British cities, including limits on building on greenfield sites until swaths of redundant brownfield land in cities are used up, and targets for higher density development that demand fewer car journeys and makes walking in cities easier.

"Sprawl has to stop in the states, but they don't know how to do it and there are lessons that can be learned from Britain," said Dermot Finch, director of Centre for Cities, the urban policy research unit. "The federal government has been largely absent from urban policy during the Bush administration. For example, transport policy has been about investing in roads. What America needs is sustainable green economic growth."

Last year Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, tried to introduce a congestion charge in Manhattan but the plan was vetoed by the state legislature and the governor of New York, said Finch. He added that city leaders in Miami, San Fransisco and Seattle were considering similar vehicle pricing measures, but said US cities continued to suffer from a lack of political leadership from Washington.

"National leaders, from Michael Heseltine to Gordon Brown, have given UK cities their high-profile attention," he said. "These champions have helped cities like Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester and Leeds transform themselves in recent decades."

The joint report also calls for improved tax breaks for the urban poor in the US.

"The US can learn a lot from smart policy reforms in the UK that have helped its cities address longstanding challenges," said Bruce Katz, director of the metropolitan programme at the Brookings Institution. "Yet our federal government has largely failed to unleash the true potential of these economic engines."

The advice represents the first signs of a reversal of several decades of American influence on British cities, most notably with the eruption of out-of-town supermarket developments during the 1980s.