London’s
empty towers mark a very British form of corruption
Simon Jenkins /
26-5-2016
These
monoliths that dominate the skyline expose the tainted wealth that
has the capital’s gullible politicians in thrall
Now we know. The
glitzy 50-storey tower that looms over London’s Vauxhall and
Pimlico is, as the Guardian revealed yesterday, just a stack of bank
deposits. Once dubbed Prescott Tower, after the minister who approved
it against all advice, it is virtually empty.
At night, vulgar
lighting more suited to a casino cannot conceal the fact that its
interior is dark, owned by absent Russians, Nigerians and Chinese. It
makes no more contribution to London than a gold bar in a bank vault,
but is far more prominent, a great smudge of tainted wealth on the
city’s horizon.
In 2003 London’s
first elected mayor, Ken Livingstone, was dazzled by a dinner
invitation to the Villa Katoushka outside Cannes. His hosts were the
titans of London’s property world and he was reportedly soon in
thrall to them.
He said he would
offer them “the potential to make very good profits” in his new
London. He especially wanted tall buildings; the taller the better.
The developer Gerald Ronson lauded him for his remarkable “vision”.
Tony Pidgley of Berkeley Homes called him “refreshing”.
The mayor was as
good as his word. He backed Ronson’s monster Heron Tower in the
City. He backed Prescott’s Vauxhall tower. He backed the Bermondsey
Shard. He even spent taxpayers’ money on lawyers to support
developers at public inquiries. At the time the Tory leader of
Wandsworth, Eddie Lister, assailed Livingstone’s obsession with
towers as a “one-man dictatorship”. David Cameron’s then cities
spokesman, John Gummer, compared Livingstone to Mussolini, and spoke
of the towers as “the vulgarity of bigness”.
Yet when Cameron
came to power, this was all forgotten. In London, property is the
most potent lobby. The Tory mayor, Boris Johnson, increased
Livingstone’s rate of tower approvals, while Lister gratefully took
office as his tall-buildings champion.
'Tower for the
toffs': UK's tallest skyscraper and playground of the rich
Read more
There was no
published plan for the drastic surgery being inflicted on London’s
appearance. No limit was set to the towers’ location or height. No
one took care of their appearance or bulk, their civic significance
or their role in the life of the capital. Some 80% of the approvals
were for luxury flats, chiefly marketed as speculations in east Asia.
Such has been the rate of unrestricted growth, there seems no reason
to doubt the dystopian vision of London’s future depicted in the
last Star Trek movie.
Johnson’s current
legacy to London is 54,000 luxury flats priced at over £1m, about to
hit a market that even before the present downturn needed just 4,000
a year. This bubble simply has to burst. The waste of building
resources, energy and space, the sheer market-wrecking bad planning,
beggars belief.
Towers have a
perfectly reputable place in the history of cities. By their nature
they dominate. They mark victories and royal palaces; they signify
civic centres and clustered downtowns. The tallest towers, in the
United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Singapore and China, reflect the
priapic obsessions of dictators and the celebrity cravings of banana
republics.
Civilised cities
such as Paris, Rome, Amsterdam – even New York, Boston and San
Francisco – either ban new towers from historic areas or zone them
into clusters. Above all they show some consideration for the
aesthetics of place.
'They are the
product of speculative flows of often 'dodgy' cash, seeking an
unregulated property market
No such
considerations applied to the Vauxhall tower. Some people like
towers, though few want them everywhere. Architects love them as
“icons”, as bankers love money.
Some cities
desperate for space, such as Hong Kong and Shanghai, build high to
cram in the poor, often in dire conditions. Studies from Jane Jacobs
to Lynsey Hanley catalogue the impact of high living on family life
and community cohesion.
In London, as the
Guardian shows, these buildings have nothing to do with housing
supply, let alone low-cost supply. Their front doors are manned not
by concierges, but by security guards, like banks. They are the
product of speculative flows of often “dodgy” cash, seeking an
unregulated property market that asks no questions and seeks a quick
profit. That is all.
The stories you need
to read, in one handy email
Read more
Most cities,
ironically including Hong Kong and Singapore, in some way restrict
foreign or non-resident acquisition of property, as do most New York
condominiums. In London gullible politicians and venal architects
have conspired to suborn a great city, simply because towers seemed
vaguely macho and money smells sweet.
Nor do towers have
to do with population density. The idea that modern cities must “go
high” as part of the densification cause is rubbish. External
landscaping and internal servicing makes them costly and inefficient.
The densest parts of London are the crowded and desirable low-rise
terraces of Victorian Islington, Camden and Kensington. The recently
proposed Paddington Pole, the height of the Shard, had just 330 flats
on 72 storeys. Adjacent, Victorian Bayswater could supply 400 on the
same plot.
Advertisement
London has seen
nothing yet. A row of giant blocks is about to rise around the Shell
Centre behind the National Theatre. The 50-storey cucumber-shaped One
Blackfriars is emerging on the bank of the Thames opposite the
Embankment. It will intrude on views of the City far more than does
the Shard.
The line of the
Thames will be marked by a series of jagged broken teeth. Prescott’s
tower at Vauxhall is to be joined by two more apartment stacks next
door, one even higher.
Next to Battersea
power station is a crowded over-development on an almost Hong Kong
scale, named Malaysia Square and aimed at the Asian super-rich.
Johnson helped sell it in 2014 by actually unveiling the development
not in London but in Kuala Lumpur. It will probably go bust and end
up as slums. At least the poor may one day live there.
Livingstone and
Johnson promoted these towers not because they cared where ordinary
Londoners would live, or because they had a coherent vision of how a
historic city should look in the 21st century. They knew they were
planning “dead” speculations, because plenty of people told them
so. They went ahead because powerful men with money and a gift for
flattery just asked. It was very British sort of corruption.
The appearance of
these structures on the London horizon must rank as the saddest
episode in the city’s recent history. We must live with them
forever. But we shall not forget their facilitators.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário