8/15/2023 0 Comments Skyscraper cities skylines![]() ![]() Among the consequences, although Parisian homes are hardly cheap, is a less acute housing crisis. More wealth is created, in other words, per citizen. Whereas in terms of population and GDP, London has grown more than Paris for most of this century, and created more jobs, the French capital has made much more impressive gains in productivity. The London v Paris comparison can be seen as one of quantity against quality. Such things naturally cost money, but the principal power of tall buildings, and the main reason why they get built, is that they unleash land value, which should mean that there are the resources for doing a good job. They also – in theory, but not too often in practice – can require that, when they are permitted, tall buildings and the spaces around them are designed with quality and intelligence. Paris has long been a highly managed and centrally directed city, with a more uniform urban fabric as a result, and big British cities are more chaotic and multifarious, which also argues against single city-wide rules.īut boroughs, mayors and national government do have the powers to implement policies that limit the carbon emissions of building construction, which if seriously done would by itself reduce the number of new towers. In London and Manchester the skyscraper ship sailed long ago, so blanket bans don’t make much sense. ![]() Photograph: Abaca Press/Alamyįor smaller and historic British cities – Norwich, for example, which has toyed with the idea of height – the message of Paris is that it’s possible to just say no. The Duo twin towers in Paris proved controversial. It’s hard to disagree with Émile Meunier, a councillor for the Greens in Paris, when he says that there’s “ no such thing as an ecological tower”. In theory, they can create population densities that sustain public transport, though in practice their residents seem quite keen on using cars. Tall buildings require more steel and concrete per square foot for their construction than lower ones, and once built need lifts and (usually) air conditioning. They’re hard to justify on environmental grounds. As for their supposed modernity, skyscrapers are like air travel: they used to be as glamorous as the jet set, but now they’re in a Ryanair phase – generic, dull and predictable, a default option for unimaginative property companies. If you go to the new multistorey districts in London, you’ll tend to find arid, lifeless places, lacking in specific character, their residents removed from street life by lifts and lobbies, their mood set by could-be-anywhere landscape design and by those chains that can pay the rents for their retail outlets. Nor are the zones created at the feet of towers convincing evidence that they enrich cities socially, spatially or culturally. And, as shown by the just-announced bankruptcy of Woking council, which went bust investing in skyscrapers, the returns on tall buildings can go down as well as up. But their contribution to housing needs is debatable – as they are expensive to build and their apartments tend to sell for high prices. To use the word in its most literal financial sense, they create vehicles for investment that bring money, often from abroad, to their locations. The question is whether they really do “enrich” cities. “If vertical buildings can enrich the heart of the capital,” says Jean Nouvel, architect of the completed Duo twin tower scheme, which is one of the projects that has prompted the new restrictions, “why deprive ourselves?” Photograph: Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone/Getty Imagesīackers of skyscrapers, in Paris as elsewhere, say they are exciting, modern, provide much-needed space for homes and employment, and attract business. ![]() The tree-lined Boulevard Haussmann In Paris has changed little over the decades. ![]()
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