Wednesday 27 May 2020
Luke Tozer
The Architecture Club member
A recording of the debate can be found at the bottom of Luke's write up.
Tall Buildings after Covid. Is the party over?
This was different to all previous Architecture Club debates in being held remotely, online through the medium of Zoom during the lockdown. Members and guests needed to bring their own refreshments.
In Building Design on 14th March 2014 the then London Mayor, Boris Johnson, said “London is a global city and therefore will inevitably have an international element to is market. You can see astonishing transformation in London thanks to international investment.”
At the time NLA’s survey had 236 towers in the pipeline, 80% being primarily residential.
In 2019 London built a record 60 new towers with a pipeline of 525 more and 60 in Manchester, Chair Peter Murray asked if this juggernaut would continue or “is the party over”?
The debate was preceded with an online poll: Is the party over?
Yes it is: 33% No it’s not: 47% Undecided 20%
Representing the motion were Barbara Weiss from the skyline campaign and Professor Robert Adam, with Karen Cook of PLP and Peter Stewart opposing.
FOR THE MOTION
Context, conservation & planning
London’s unique world class character and DNA is not suited to an abundance of tall buildings. A series of villages and poetic and sensitive views have already been ruined.
Sustainability – environmental & social
Environmental cost of tall buildings is high and their ongoing maintenance difficult, costly and unsuited to local housing need. Tall buildings produce a curtailed way of life, where residents aren’t easily able to participate in urban life, being siloed in their towers, away from street life.
Form follows finance
Over the last 6 years finance has driven buildings skywards. Much of tall building development is funded by foreign investment. This is a mix of status and economics, which can go hand in hand in tall buildings: the wow factor. But beyond status, tall buildings make more money. Or they have done.
The twin impact of Covid19 and Brexit mean that the party’s over, international finance is already starting to flow away, driven by concern over tighter immigration, reducing populations and global recession. It’s an economic rather than an urban or architectural issue. The cost of tall buildings is too high.
AGAINST THE MOTION
Sustainable cities need density
Light and clean air are shared assets that should be available to all. Walkable cities where work is close to home requires high density and inherently more sustainable that the alternative of suburban sprawl. Greater London density is 4.5k/km2 with 12-16k/km2 in central areas. Paris is over 20k/km2 average and 40k/km2 in some areas.
Density is what’s important rather than height per se. High density is good and sustainable. Where land is limited high density produces tall buildings.
London exceptionalism – limited land
London can’t be like Paris or Barcelona in adopting high density mid-rise as we’re starting from a different position, with a heritage of Georgian and Victoria terraces. We need to reuse the limited brownfield land already developed post war. The only way is up.
Affordability
City rents are ½ what they were 30 years ago as a result of more tall buildings, providing large areas of development on limited land. Higher density reduces the cost of development per home and creates affordable neighbourhoods.
Visual aspects of tall buildings
Harking back to Vitruvian principles all buildings need to be useful, durable, pleasing to the eye. Tall buildings too. Good tall buildings enrich the city. What they represent is just as important as how they look. Tall buildings are more prominent and thus require a higher standard of quality. Keep on building, but build better. The failings of tall buildings are those of planning.
Then the debate was opened up for wider contributions from members.
Changing patterns of work
Growth of home working has accelerated. Facebook 24,000 staff to be working from home. This change is likely to change the economics. Almost all tall office buildings are for ‘service’ industries that are able, we have now discovered, to work from home. We need less time in the office. The economic base for building tall office buildings has been undermined.
High density doesn’t need tall buildings
Paris and Barcelona are dense without tall buildings. Leslie Martin & Lionel March perimeter theory, land use and built form demonstrates that there’s no direct correlation between tall buildings and density.
Sustainability
Environment: Construction accounts for 40% of global emissions. Environmental impact of tall buildings is undoubted, with higher embodied Carbon with each floor. A radical rethink on the use of land is required, not simply building up.
Economic: Tall buildings have high maintenance costs, less flexible - more difficult to adapt and reuse in the future.
The environmental impact of buildings and a response to climate change should determine the form of buildings, not finance.
A no growth city future?
An interesting view was expressed about London’s future growth suffering from an ‘exuberance’ of tall buildings and the city needing a rest. With an aging population in mature economies and cities, the argument was put forward that populations will reduce and perhaps as a society we may need to deal with an economy without growth. Not great for built environment professions perhaps.
The poll at the end of the debate – is the party over for tall buildings?
Yes it is: 62% No it’s not: 28%
Conclusion
The motion was successful, the party is over for tall buildings. The winning arguments were economic (they no longer make money) and environmental (the cost is too high).
While the debate was perhaps a little London centric, there were many elements of the discussion around tall buildings that both sides agreed upon: the problem is not exemplary tall buildings, it’s the poor quality ones that blight the villages of London. That the wider impact of tall buildings required higher levels of scrutiny and quality and that local authorities were incapable of controlling this through the current planning system. Too many mediocre towers with little public benefit are damaging the urban fabric. Tenement blocks and mansion blocks provide high density models that are successful in the UK and encourage community in a way that tall buildings do not.
Despite this there will, inevitably, still be some new tall buildings, “while the party is ending, there are always a few drunks who won’t go”.
The new debate format seemed to work well and the discussion flowed reasonably smoothly, with contributions from the floor either being read aloud by Peter or being raised ‘in person’ over zoom. There was some scepticism that Covid19 would cause a fundamental rethink of how we live together as a society and how we would organise ourselves and build to suit a ‘new normal’. Cities are resilient places and have survived waves of pandemics through the ages. Perhaps Covid19 won’t change the shape of our cities, but it seems more likely that this is the shape of debates to come. At least while we await a vaccine.