'A tortured heap of towers': the London skyline of tomorrow | Hacker News Reader

'A tortured heap of towers': the London skyline of tomorrow

theguardian.com

67 pointsPatient044 comments

I don't understand what these people are complaining about. I walk across Waterloo Bridge twice a day, and it's the highlight of my commute. The view east down the river is stunning, and there are always people admiring it. I don't think London has ever looked better.

People hate change, no matter how good or bad. For instance, Arlington, VA has transformed massively since they ran the DC Metro through it. To someone who was alive in the 1960s the parts near the Metro lines would be almost unrecognizable.

Here's a letter to the editor complaining of all the changes in Arlington written a few days ago:

https://www.arlnow.com/2015/12/09/letter-to-the-editor-arlin...

TL;DR old woman complains of change, wishes there were still cows in land immediately adjacent to the nation's capital city.

Arlington is a Jane Jacobs nightmare. With the exception of places like Clarendon, it's all tall buildings with enormous lawns surrounding them at every angle. It makes walking almost worthless, even in a huge metropolitan area.

Contrast with Manhattan: much taller, much denser, with a greater concentration of shops and services per area.

It's not that change or densification is bad by any means, but there are ways to do it very, very wrong, and fixing those changes takes decades, if it is ever even done.

>With the exception of places like Clarendon, it's all tall buildings with enormous lawns surrounding them at every angle. It makes walking almost worthless, even in a huge metropolitan area.

When were you last in Arlington? I live in Arlington and I walk everywhere and bike to work. Arlington is actually used as a model in urban planning textbooks to show a transformation from a car centric area into a walkable one. The states are clear; traffic has fallen and it is almost at the point where a majority of people don't drive alone to work.

The Crystal City, Pentagon City, and Rosslyn (to a much lesser extent) areas have lots of work to be done, but N. Arlington along Wilson and Clarendon are very walkable from Rosslyn to Ballston.

I can't think of too many 'tall buildings surrounded by lawns' along Wilson or Clarendon Blvds. Look at it from the air. I know of one in Rosslyn that meets the description near the Safeway; it has a lawn. Other than that, there's not too much green space other than a small handful of parks.

Areas away from the Metro are mostly single family housing with a handful of places, like some spots on Columbia Pike, that have some slight walkability to them.

>Contrast with Manhattan: much taller, much denser, with a greater concentration of shops and services per area.

Of course, it's Manhattan. Anywhere in the greater DC metro area compares unfavorably given that nowhere in the area is nearly as dense, even in DC. Few, if any, places in the US could be compared favorably.

EDIT:

Here are some streetview links illustrating the built environment in Arlington for those outside of the area.

View on Clarendon Blvd. facing away from DC on western end of Rosslyn:

https://goo.gl/maps/X96A2w9spsJ2

Wilson Blvd. near the Rosslyn Metro station:

https://goo.gl/maps/owGGWu4ZyP32

Near the actual Courthouse

https://goo.gl/maps/8dRAzVzEHf92

Another view near the Court House Metro station:

https://goo.gl/maps/mz5Z7uE9JVs

One of the remnant suburban style buildings on the Court House / Claredon border:

https://goo.gl/maps/L295anQZ46H2

Clarendon:

https://goo.gl/maps/9XfPUP76k4r

Another view of Clarendon:

https://goo.gl/maps/gHSk93EBfcD2

Ballston:

https://goo.gl/maps/fo7hfint9qj

Another view from Wilson:

https://goo.gl/maps/m2Jtt42uMnM2

Virginia Square:

https://goo.gl/maps/yCQHcv21CGm

> wishes there were still cows in land immediately adjacent to the nation's capital city.

Considering how important and influential the beef industry is that's not a terrible idea.

Considering how expensive housing and office space is in and around DC, I think this would be a terrible idea. We shouldn't make housing and office space more expensive so that we can allow one special industry to lobby slightly more effectively.

This was even true in the 40s and 50s; DC had had explosive growth due to WWII and the population was over 800,000 people. There was a shortage of housing even then which Arlington and other areas took advantage of.

If anything, rural interests are already over represented in the Federal government given the nature of the Senate and how we determine the number of members in the house and electoral college votes.

I say this a lot on HN: rural interests are urban interests. That's where our food and clean air are made.

>I say this a lot on HN: rural interests are urban interests.

No, they don't always align. There are different needs in rural areas and urban areas that compete with one another.

Transportation needs, for instance, are vastly different in rural Illinois than in Chicago. Farmers might lobby for more and bigger roads and dislike public transit because it doesn't make sense in their regions. Meanwhile people in Chicago want more and better transit. These needs compete for the same infrastructure dollars.

People in cities need to eat, but their interests are directly harmed by the various food price control mechanisms that the Feds put in place. Price floors, for instance, ensure that milk won't get too cheap. Who benefits? Farmers who couldn't compete at lower prices. Who loses? Every other person.

Cities can pollute rivers that farmers depend on or even dam them for power needs. They can seize agricultural land for urban needs like high speed rail or airports or landfills.

So no, urban and rural interests don't always align. There are quite a number of issues that can benefit one or the other but not both.

I don't agree with stacking the deck so that they get more power per capita.

I must admit that I found the letter rather charming.

Particular highlights:

>Why couldn’t the county have been left as it was in the “old days,”

>Why, I can’t even find my way around most of the county any more!

>When I was in the first grade at John Marshall Elementary, I remember riding the school bus by an old house on Military Road with a milk cow in the front yard!

Definitely - I travel in to London from the east, and I love seeing the cluster at Canary Wharf, and then the cluster that this article focuses on, with my train travelling underneath it.

If anything, I wish the regulations were a bit more relaxed so we could have some more clusters to the west, to balance out the heavy weighting of the skyline to the east.

Fenchurch or DLR? The latter is the best experience; I'm stuck on the former, unfortunately.

Liverpool Street actually - I suppose my initial comment was inaccurate/exaggerated now I think about it. Either way, those buildings are my favourite part of the journey, as far as scenery.

Gotcha. Yeah, they definitely help to build the excitement when travelling into the city. The best thing about the Shard is the view from the top of it - gives a whole new perspective to the 'gherkin cluster' of buildings.

I like the London Skyline, except for the Shard which is so large - and indeed ugly - that it can be seen from many places across London. These 'super-large' buildings pollute the skylines of many many neighbours in a way that Canary Wharf, the Gerkin etc simply don't.

Because people hate change. Do the change, leave it a few years then everyone thinks those buildings have now become part of the character of a city and don't want to change it...

Not everyone. To some, it will always be better back in ye olden times.

People have different tastes. Why is that so surprising to you?

Emphasis there on commute. What if you happened to live beside where one of these huge skyscrapers is plonked down?

Practically nobody lives near those things.

And the reason is because it's too darn expensive, not because people don't want to. http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/map.html?locati...

Maybe not in the city, but there are towers going up all over the place in London.

Surprisingly interesting and really well presented --- the animations are inspired.

Personally, I love big, ugly skyscrapers (I've been trying to get myself onto a tour of the Gherkin for Open Doors Day for years). I do agree with the decision to limit them to one particular district, though. London's got a lot of fantastic buildings which don't want to be overwhelmed, and besides, skyscrapers look best from a distance.

(I didn't know that views of St. Pauls are protected by law! And I'm embarrassed to say that I never even knew about the Great Fire of London memorial...)

You should take a look at King Henry's Mound in Richmond Park, which is maybe 10 miles away from St Pauls cathedral, but with a protected view.

You can clearly see the dome through carefully designed passages of trees and lack of building obstructions all the way to central London.

Pretty cool to see.

You haven't missed much. The Gherkin is as deprived of a soul as the other towers in the city; and the bar at the top is just a place to bring clients so they can say "I've been to the top of the Gherkin." It's just a really sad place, and I don't miss working there. (If you have to go though, I can recommend Association – a coffee shop around the corner which is really nice. Despite all the cheap suits.)

I'm not surprised. There's a strange talent in modern architecture for buildings which on the outside are these amazing, breathtaking shapes, and then to completely waste those shapes when designing the interior.

Case in point: the Millennium Dome. This awe-inspiringly huge enclosed space... which was then partitioned up so that visitors couldn't see it.

Well, no one cares what goes on inside the building I suppose. Most people – even clients – never enter them anyway. The most impressive office I've ever seen was an office in Chicago. Non-descript building, really couldn't point it out in a line up, but the interior was just amazing. Not the Google Disneyland oh-look-there's-cotton-candy kind of amazing; i.e. not so much novelty as it was just.. Classy I guess.

A few annoyances though, if you click play on the audio clip and scroll down, the audio clip stops.

Because obviously you can't read and listen at the same time, as any wife knows.

But these interactive stories are definitely getting better.

I didn't have my speakers on, so I wasn't aware there were any!

(And, TBH, I rather like the idea of the bandwidth heavy video player automatically turning off when it becomes invisible.)

The video pausing doesn't always mean that it's stopped downloading.

Typical complaint about tall buildings

The other option is to follow Dublin's model where height is severely limited and companies can't find office space?

As opposed to London where companies just can't _afford_ office space ;)

In a sensible world, building loads of office space should decrease the price of it.

But welcome to London...

You mean, because the Russians parked their money there?

> These rigid rules first appeared in the 1930s, when the surveyor of St Paul’s came up with a precise grid of heights around the cathedral to safeguard the panorama from the South Bank. “We’ve been able to calculate where he took his views from, and most of them end up outside pubs,” says Rees.

The more times change. But it is interesting how some minor vices can have more than their fair share of consequences.

Really enjoying the graphics on this page!

Agreed - what wonderful animations, especially the one travelling down fleet street.

Also, I thought the map which overlaid more content as you scrolled the text over it was a good design. Very simple but effective.

My personal fantasy is that they'll turn the Isle of Dogs in to an area that looks like Hong Kong.

Kowloon Dog City.

> “We’ve been able to calculate where he took his views from, and most of them end up outside pubs,” says Rees.

That might be just because England has so many pubs. There are currently over 60,000, and this is after the closing of 28,000 pubs.

When will city buildings stop being delineated by ground-level roads, and start extending thru the space over roads - making single vast structures instead of individual spires?

It'll be more acceptable to do that once there's a majority of electric or hydrogen cars on the roads. Otherwise those enclosed roads are air handling nightmares.

I haven't been there but I've heard Hong Kong is a bit like this. In a YouTube video, some people were championing that it's been 3 weeks since the touched the ground.

There are a few buildings like that. Near the barbican there's a massive building that is built over the road. There are a few more dotted around.

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