Tall buildings and London BY LEE POLISANO (Kohn Pederson Associates)
August 14, 2007
High quality, tall buildings can be not only sustainable, they can surprise, delight and
inspire their users, argues Lee Polisano.
Love or hate them, towers are part of the fabric of our global urban
landscape and they are here to stay. Over the last 100 years they have become icons of heroism, modernity,
revolution, freedom. They symbolized a new way of living and came to express the corporate identity of
successful enterprises and the egos of those who controlled them. They represented capitalism, wealth, dominance and power. But what will the tower of the 21st century symbolize? In an evolving global landscape that is increasingly under pressure from a burgeoning urban population, tall buildings have the potential to play a significant role in re-invigorating and sustaining our cities of the future, including the future of London.
If we are to have an appreciation for why London needs to build taller and what might lie ahead for our city,
we need to understand the “context” that has brought us to this point in time. Global context Within the next 25 years, 80 per cent of the world’s population will live in our cities and our urban centres. Most of this increase will
happen in cities that we have never heard of. The manner in which we occupy this earth will also need to change. Currently in the UK, we are occupying three times our earthshare and our proportional share of the earth’s resources. As the world’s population continues to rise and our available resources continue to shrink, we will soon be unable to sustain our escalating population growth and our current way of living, unless we adjust many things, including our built form. Taller buildings, are giving cities the capacity to increase density and maintain a high quality of life for large numbers of people. This is not unique to London. Many of our cities are becoming
more powerful than entire countries (Fig. 1). The GDP of London almost equals that of Saudi Arabia; and If
New York were a nation, it would rank as the 16th largest economy in the world, behind South Korea.
Megalopolises are the way of the future – today there are 22 cities that have a population over 8 million
inhabitants. It is cities not countries that are now competing with each other, each striving to symbolize their
success through their skyline. But what does this mean for London? London context London is one of a handful of
truly global cities. In order for it to retain this position, it is important to recognize that its policies and the
way its future growth and development are planned and administered must be different from that of the
rest of this country. London has evolved as a polycentric city with varying densities – originating as a commercial trading city along the river it now has a variety of building topologies reflecting the different aspects of its growth into a modern city; Covent Garden (lowrise dense theatre district), Oxford Street (hi-density shopping) to
Canary Wharf (Americanized skyscrapers). Although, there are several areas which have emerged with proposals for tall buildings in London, it must be recognized that for most of its history, London has
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