Martin Linton, MP for Battersea, Balham and Wandsworth:
I would like to strike a blow not just against mega-towers in my constituency, but against the whole idea that we can improve our town centres by building high. Paris, Rome, Venice, Vienna, Prague and St Petersburg consign their tall buildings to defined areas. The result is cities that are elegant and atmospheric as well as economically successful.
Scrapping the height and density guidelines has frankly been a disaster. It means that architects compete against one another to build the tallest towers instead of complementing one another to create an attractive townscape. It means developers pay too much for sites and then 'have to' build high to recover their outlay. It means the public are blackmailed by developers who will only build something good if we allow them to build something monstrous as well.
Read on. Reflect. Discuss.
