What I particularly like about London is that there are many green spaces. In that sens, it is much more livable than Paris.

Regarding the supposedly "skyline growing mess" it seems that most skyscrapers built, under construction or planned are located in four distinct areas : Canary Wharf, Wood wharf, the City and Nine Elms. Therefore, even though some highrises are built randomly outside of these four clusters, it is not really a "mess" unless of course if you don't like skyscrapers at all. In that case, the word "mess" should be replaced by the word "nightmare".

In terms of londons skyline I hate how disorganised it looks from a lot of angles. If all our towers were in one cluster instead of several it would look huge. In the long term it will look bigger when all the clusters merge as then we will have a city wide skyline, but it will take years for that to happen. I think the city cluster and the southbank, shoreditch, southwark, aldgate and city road clusters will merge much sooner, and canary wharf will merge with wood wharf and Greenwich soon too, but there will still be a gap between the two cluster groups that will take a long time to fill, although nine elms cluster will help bridge it

Nine Elms is nowhere near the other skyscraper clusters in London, nor will it ever merge with them. They're not building any more skyscrapers in the West End. Not will Canary Wharf ever connect to the City's skyline, they're too far apart.

I could see how it maybe adds "fun" but not sure how you equate building a carnival ride along a river bank with "keeping its history and tradition." It quite literally interferes with both.

Just because an attraction draws tourist, as several forumers have stated, doesn't mean that something is good. That's a terrible argument. I can think of dozens of tourist attractions that detract from their environs and should have never been built: much of Hollywood Blvd/Fishermans Wharf, Niagara Fall ON, Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge, the wooden horse at Troy, the Hollywood Sign knockoffs in Rasnov/Brasov, much of the grand-scale public art seen in major American financial districts, some of Gehry's work.

I feel like London is getting away with one here. If I allowed myself to have bad taste, I could see how a Ferris wheel could work in a mid-sized American or Latin-American city. But London? How would people feel if it dominated the view of the Colosseum/Vatican, Hagia Sofia, Summer Palace, Wat Pho, Zytglogge, . . .

I do agree that attracting tourists is a good thing when it draws them away from areas where locals like to hang out.

You're interpreted my points in exactly the opposite way from what I intended. It allows London to emphasize newness while also keeping its history and tradition...that doesn't mean the wheel is part of the history or tradition, just that the two can coexist. Drawing tourists can reduce the pressure on the other touristy areas.

Drawing tourists to neglected areas and at the same time reducing the impact on high-trafficked areas makes sense. I just don't think sacrificing the skyline with a ridiculous gimmick is worth it.

I was just making a general point about the value of tourist traps.

I think history has a lot to do with defining the iconicity of a structure; go back a century and many people would have taken a similar view with the Eiffel Tower. Even St Paul’s Cathedral was derided for its design, but is now protected by countless sightlines. There is a valid point to be discussed that its international status has definitely been elevated in a short period of time (relative to the Eiffel Tower) simply because the Eye has been emulated in other cities across the globe. Regardless of our views, history will be the ultimate judge.

An interesting theory, but the reason why London has turned to high-rise construction is down to very high land & property prices, the inability to sprawl out (due to the Green Belt), limited development site opportunities, and population growth in excess of 100,000 people every year. Even then, the majority of construction in London is focused closer to the ten storey mark, and the total supply of new residential units lags demand, and has done for years.

You are correct that a substantial proportion of the global elite are relocating their wealth to London; London after all is a stable and attractive environment, yet that isn’t a major driver of the London economy, especially when compared to other sectors such as business & financial services, media, education, tourism, etc…

Whilst I would agree that R&D and investment play a role in the status of a world city, they are but a segment of a multitude of other variables that define such cities. Do you have a quantifiable study to support these points?

One area I would highlight is that whilst Korea may indeed produce 10x more patents than the UK, I would suspect that the vast majority (in both countries and across the globe) are insignificant and of poor economic value; GDP per capita is 75% higher in the UK than South Korea.

So long as London doesn't get too carried away with adding icons:


http://i.imgur.com/RzsWR.jpg

^ Oh my god. My eyes, they burn...

Hahahaha!!

Exactly. Notice how the ferris wheel blends in perfectly well with all of the other ridiculous oddities. You can't even tell that it wasn't photoshopped into the picture.

That roller coaster would be a hell of a way to commute. Imagine setting different stops along the coaster.

Yeah, the first word that comes to mind is 'awkward'.

lmao

Look, London is a very decentralized, spread out city because of its history.

You have the original Roman settlement (now known as the City), which developed as a trading/financial center. When London became the royal seat of power in the 11th century (after the Norman Conquest), you had essentially an entirely new city grow in what is now Westminster, and later across the park in St James and Mayfair (which are all now part of the City of Westminster, the other actual city within London). These were once distinct settlements, with farms between them in what are now the Strand and Covent Garden.

Then you have Kensington, which was a number of small villages with farms between them until the upper classes started moving west (upwind) to avoid London's polluted air. It really took off when Kensington Palace was built at the end of the 17th century (and the royal court arrived), which stimulated all kinds of economic activity.

The rest of what is now London consisted of dozens of villages that were later absorbed into the metropolis, which is why the density doesn't decline gradually as you move away from the center of town, and why you'll go through areas developed only in the 20th century and then find yourself in a neighborhood that looks like a 17th century village.

It was developed largely by aristocratic landowners whose families had held large estates for hundreds of years, and decided they were more valuable as urban developments than as agricultural estates as the city grew (the whole central neighborhood of Marylebone, for instance, is owned by one family... everything there is leased from them: http://www.hdwe.co.uk/).

In short... London is never going to have a skyline that looks like an American city.

Here's an interesting perspective (from the way west):

http://i.imgur.com/jpLL10y.jpg

And a broader angle of the photo posted before:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7292/9...2a6a1e5a_k.jpg

by James Neely @ Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpn/921...n/photostream/

Old pic, but London is famous for it's architectural diversity. With or without the London Eye the cityscape would still be very diferential:

http://m9.i.pbase.com/o4/09/365409/1...ondonpano4.JPG

Great photo.

I guess it really is different strokes for different folks, because I like it. I happen not to be a fan of skylines that looked too planned, with and a predictable signature tower to form the middle of of a perfect peak. That seems like a modern American taste, where you have these purpose-built, single-use CBDs - and it usually shows at street-level, too. It's why within the greater London skyline, Canary Wharf is probably my least favorite section. Skylines in a lot of Europe tend to reflect the fact and reality that there isn't open space in these cores, you know, that actual cities existed in these spots for centuries. That's not a bad thing, at all.

I like a skyline that tells a long, diverse story. London's does that for me; it's a sexy, beautiful disaster of a skyline.