MIPIM UK: The crop of residential towers springing up along London’s South Bank are an appalling waste of land, according to former City planner Peter Rees.
“You can see a forest of demented telegraph poles from Bermondsey to Battersea,” said Rees, who is now professor of places and planning at University College London.
He added: “Those two identical mayors, Boris and Ken, have destroyed the London skyline.”
While the city had been forced to build tall to accommodate commercial demand, building “investment properties on 125-year leases has frozen sites for a generation”.
Speaking at a MIPIM UK debate on building tall, English Heritage planning and conservation director Nigel Barker agreed that London’s planning guidance needed revision.
Barker said: “It is about building the right thing in the right place and London still hasn’t got it right. Tall buildings have a role but we need to talk about what that role is.”
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