[Mercutio]

A city like Hong Kong has more skyscrapers than the whole of Europe combined in pretty much every height category (ie 150m+, 200m+, 300m+ etc). Ditto New York, Chicago, Shanghai, and Dubai. I for one don't care to race against these cities. Of course skyscrapers are an exciting architectural form, that's why we come to this forum after all, and I would definitely like to see greater represention of that form in Europe. However I think Europe has the best collection of cities of any continent even without skyscrapers. European cities have the best architecture, the most attractive streets and public spaces, and the best streetlife of any continent. European cities also have much more instantly recognisable landmarks than cities of other continents. Chicago is rightly admired on this forum for its superb skyscrapers. But can Jo Public around the world identify a single Chicago landmark? No! The same is true for Tokyo - a vast and wealthy metropolis that nonetheless cannot boast a single world famous building or monument - nor one that deserves to be world famous. Europe's cities would also be ruined if we built too many or too tall skyscrapers. Imagine some enormous glass skyscrapers hulking over Big Ben, Red Square, St Peter's, the Parthenon, or the Eiffel Tower? Would that look good? Of course not! It would ruin our beautiful cities and their famous and world recognised landmarks. We Europeans are lucky to inherit such beautiful and distinctive cities. We should therefore be careful to place skyscraper clusters only in certain designated zones where they do not overwhelm our attractive and historic cityscapes. We should also pay greater attention to design quality than to numbers or raw height. Taipei 101 may be the tallest skyscraper in the world but it's also hideously ugly. Sao Paulo is a contendor for the most high-rises of any city in the world but 99% of them have zero architectural merit, and, overall, Sao Paulo remains a very ugly city. So forget height and numbers. Design, location, and proportion should be the skyscraping goals of world's most civilised continent.