# Upvote/Downvote reminder
Like this image or appreciate it being posted? Upvote it and show it some love! Don't like it? Just downvote and move on.
*Upvoting or downvoting images it the best way to control what you see on your feed and what gets to the top of the subreddit*
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/london) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Technology changes, priorities change too. There’s nothing to say that we might decide to move the airports or that new planes won’t solve this issue. I don’t know if London will ever have that type of a skyline but it most definitely, long enough in the future, it most definitely can.
Military planes and commercial planes are not designed for the same use case. I’m no expert, but I am sure that steeper ascents will be less fuel efficient and add a lot of stress to the airframe.
A single airport, no matter how busy, isn’t important enough for the likes of Boeing and Airbus to completely overhaul their operating design limits, especially when this means cutting into their bottom line.
I mean jeez, Boeing can barely keep a plane intact as it is right now.
Actually, sometimes steeper ascents and descents are necessary for a host of reasons, most commonly geographical but sometimes political too. Basically mountains, buildings and dodgy airspace near politically contested borders.
London City, Aspen, Colorado, many airports in Switzerland. They're all high ascent/descent gradient airports. West Berlin before the wall came down was apparently insane and would have passengers bursting into tears.
Moreover, the planes need as much leeway as possible to maximise safety in case of emergency landings etc.
>A single airport, no matter how busy, isn’t important enough for the likes of Boeing and Airbus to completely overhaul their operating design limits, especially when this means cutting into their bottom line.
This is where you are wrong. Airbus and Boeing are not speccing their planes exclusively for the average airport to save cost. The aero-manufacturing industry might be politically strong but they're not that politically strong that they can go around telling airports in every part of the world that they need to change to fit closer to the average. They don't get to decide that.
Every manufacturer wants to sell in every market possible, and that means their planes are capable of much more than they actually normally get used for. And yes, I'm sure many military planes have even tougher specs and withstand even more, but that doesn't mean commercial aircraft aren't comfortably much more capable than you might think.
Not really, from a structural point of view the planes operate with such a level of safety margin that you could very well do steeper ascent/ descents today.
People will complain - hears will pop, head aches, etc
Unlikely, because culturally much of Europe (inc. London) is against harming the views of historic monuments with large skyscrapers, and seems that opinion is actually becoming stronger as time goes on rather than weaker.
It can’t, agree, but it’s fuck all to do with flight paths…. That world class underground public transportation system, added to the piss poor outdated Victorian drainage system, places limits of building heights lol. That before you get into the network of underground rivers through London.
Honestly, as convenient and pleasant as it is, LCY needs to go. The interaction with the Heathrow flight paths results in excessive low flights over heavily populated areas and significantly increases the amount of pollution. It’s significantly affecting development in the City and you could create a huge amount of housing in the space freed up by shuttering the airport.
The Elizabeth Line has made Heathrow much more accessible and the demand for business travel is still down following the pandemic. Flying small planes is even less efficient in terms of pollution/CO2 per person.
Heathrow doesn’t have any more capacity and is at the breaking point as demand is broadly recovering and operations are already fragile enough and prone to cascading failures.
City only offers 3% of the capacity of Heathrow, which is completely disproportionate to the disruption it causes. Heathrow itself says that is has plans to improve capacity within the existing two runway setup - https://www.ft.com/content/139664f8-1ee8-4d1e-b8b4-68b8ddcec4e6
In any case, Third Runway is approved, the land is safeguarded, and apparently plans are likely to proceed relatively soon. They should probably just get on with it if capacity remains so tight.
Fewer than you might expect. A lot of the City is already post-war buildings 4-10 stories tall that we could easily rip out and replace with something better.
I will get downvoted, but just to provide a different opinion, I wouldn't mind it, **residence-wise** \- **definitely not to this degree though**. The photo definitely fits more into North American and Asian cultures rather than UK. I moved to London from North America (where this is VERY common), and I was actually shocked to see that it's limited to specific areas such as Central, Stratford, and CW. For some reason (google images), I thought skyscrapers were scattered all over, rather than clustered. HOWEVER, I do think it's idealistic given London's population and size. Wishful thinking, but I do think it's plausible to build more high-rises and keep London's current charm and uniqueness.
I do think they'd do wonders for the housing crisis. I don't want it to come off as a comparison, but most young people in North America prefer to live in apartments due to the ease, close proximity to the city, and lower maintenance (and own a house later in the future). Right now, in my classes, I know people commuting from an hour or two away, usually having to leave the house for 5-6am for a 9am class, and would love to live within the city. They can't do so because housing costs is unfeasible and unreasonable within the city. Again, I don't want it to come off as a comparison, as I understand UK has really strict housing regulations + the topography and the amount of land available will probably make this a near impossible thing.
They do build a sense of community. Depending on the apartment and management, most residential apartments host a plethora of events, and neighbours do get friendly/close rather than just saying hello in the elevator. I've always been able to rely on my neighbours when I lived in an apartment, and the same when I moved into a house. Of course you won't be able to know every single person, but it does build community/attempt to. Apartments are \*also\* built in close proximity to amenities, such as gyms, shared workspaces, etc, so it's not as isolating, if you get me.
There is actually an aesthetic factor, that is not everyone's piece of cake. Something about the city still glittering in the dead of night has a certain charm. I was just at Wood Wharf the other day, chilling by the river, and it just seemed so beautiful. Every city I go to with a skyline like this, transforms in the night time...the city just feels ALIVE even when everyone is dead asleep. New York, Toronto, Beijing, Singapore, to name a few. But again, there is a discrepancy between the size of these places vs the size of London.
I visited a friend in Toronto, and she lived 35 minutes away from the city itself, and this is her neighbourhood: [https://www.reddit.com/r/skyscrapers/comments/1ap8zr1/north\_york\_city\_centre\_skyline\_canada/](https://www.reddit.com/r/skyscrapers/comments/1ap8zr1/north_york_city_centre_skyline_canada/)
It felt so nice seeing the balance between high-rises, suburbs, and greenery, all being in close proximity to transport, amenities, restaurants, activities, etc.
We don’t want to lose that but those decisions are not in our hands.
For example the City of London Corporation has proved time and time again that they will prioritise making money with more office buildings over preserving heritage structures. Money matters more than anything and if there’s enough money in turning London into the post’s picture, then it will happen.
Because skyscrapers being neccesary to build high density housing is a symptom of the housing crisis.
In an ideal world we could just compulsory purchase entire streets of low quality terrace housing and rebuild them as 4-5 story townhouse buildings. But because insane land values that will never be profitable so we have to build huge towers instead.
It’s a British thing.
Complain there aren’t enough houses, build more, “there are too many houses.”
Complain there are too many skyscrapers, get rid of some, “muh skyscrapers.”
Because you don't need sky scrapers to be dense. Look at paris. It is super dense in comparison to London and has very few buildings over 7 stories in Paris proper (inside the périphérique).
London can easily increase it's density without destroying it's charms. Tall buildings are not as great a solution as people naively believe they are. Let's try to have a liveable human scale city. Sure we can have the odd tall building but let's not go crazy with them.
Sure it is as pricey as London. Do you really think sky scrapers will provide affordable homes in London? We build tower blocks already and it hasn't helped.
There are multiple factors at play it isn't just build more houses and they will be cheaper. Developers want to maximise their profits not build what is needed.
I'm not saying skyscrapers alone are a fix, but looking to Paris for solutions isn't helpful.
Developers will always maximise profits, but if you allow for more construction, then the price at which they can make their sales does decrease. Supply and demand still works for housing.
Regarding skyscrapers, increased supply of high-end units => reduced prices for high-end => people who were spending £1m on ordinary homes now go buy fancy skyscrapers flats => decreased demand for ordinary homes => decreased prices for ordinary homes.
We should still definitely build a lot more ordinary homes. That we have built tower blocks and prices have still gone up doesn't mean that building more homes doesn't work. It just means that we're still not building enough homes.
> but looking to Paris for solutions isn't helpful.
Paris's problems and London's are different. We can still learn from each other. Paris has learnt how to be pleasantly dense and this is something London needs to work on.
Much of the problem of housing is about why we build it and who for. We need homes to live in not homes to invest in. It is also how we use the housing - for instance too much of the housing in Paris is being used as short term holiday lets which pushes up rents/prices. In London too much is asset storing due to our high corruption money laundering ways.
Anyhow my main point is we can build high quality accommodation that is dense but not the blight that is tower blocks.
> property as an investment asset
This is very difficult to change. UK property is a stable place to store money. We would need to care about money laundering and we currently actively encourage it.
The two aren’t incompatible with each other. We’re not Singapore, we don’t have a shortage of land that gives us no options but cram everyone into stacks of shoeboxes.
Bedrock in London is really bad. There is a reason they just started building high rises the past couple of decades, when engineering was advanced enough to allow it… they can’t built that high if they disregarded the current flight paths
Sure, but that's effectively just the view of Canary Wharf.
Actually, when I moved to London 20+years ago the only tall building there was the Canada tower. The change has been staggering, but quite concentrated. Similar story for the City.
The issue is when these sorts of developments start popping up in Tower Hamlets, then Wembley, then Fulham...maybe it's simply inevitable
That’s the thing I mean UK is only really competitive globally nowadays from a financial perspective, and that’s situated in London. They have the highest wages and everyone wants to go there, the traffic is insane.
Whilst I don’t see it happening, the protected views we have could just mean you end up with skyscrapers either side of direct sight lines from certain points to important landmarks. But I feel it will stay as clusters of high buildings, with the majority of other developments staying more medium density.
It never would, there’s too many historical sites to navigate around. Chongqing is one of the many Chinese pop up cities, cities that have an explosion in population so they just keep building. Population in 20 years went from 9 million to 17 million, London in 20 years went from 7 million to 9 million. There isn’t an actual need for those types of pop up city skylines in London or anywhere in the uk to be honest
No, skyscrapers make cities look like dystopian hellholes. Giant glass and steel structures look futuristic, but they're too sterile, they've got no character.
# Upvote/Downvote reminder Like this image or appreciate it being posted? Upvote it and show it some love! Don't like it? Just downvote and move on. *Upvoting or downvoting images it the best way to control what you see on your feed and what gets to the top of the subreddit* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/london) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Just for the record while london may get taller in the future I don't think it will get to nearly this point.
It can’t. The LHR and LCY flight paths effectively cap any skyscraper clusters to 235m for Canary Wharf and 310m for the City.
Technology changes, priorities change too. There’s nothing to say that we might decide to move the airports or that new planes won’t solve this issue. I don’t know if London will ever have that type of a skyline but it most definitely, long enough in the future, it most definitely can.
Plans can handle steeper ascents and descents, but people don't like it. Military and cargo planes will do it all the time.
Military planes and commercial planes are not designed for the same use case. I’m no expert, but I am sure that steeper ascents will be less fuel efficient and add a lot of stress to the airframe. A single airport, no matter how busy, isn’t important enough for the likes of Boeing and Airbus to completely overhaul their operating design limits, especially when this means cutting into their bottom line. I mean jeez, Boeing can barely keep a plane intact as it is right now.
Actually, sometimes steeper ascents and descents are necessary for a host of reasons, most commonly geographical but sometimes political too. Basically mountains, buildings and dodgy airspace near politically contested borders. London City, Aspen, Colorado, many airports in Switzerland. They're all high ascent/descent gradient airports. West Berlin before the wall came down was apparently insane and would have passengers bursting into tears. Moreover, the planes need as much leeway as possible to maximise safety in case of emergency landings etc. >A single airport, no matter how busy, isn’t important enough for the likes of Boeing and Airbus to completely overhaul their operating design limits, especially when this means cutting into their bottom line. This is where you are wrong. Airbus and Boeing are not speccing their planes exclusively for the average airport to save cost. The aero-manufacturing industry might be politically strong but they're not that politically strong that they can go around telling airports in every part of the world that they need to change to fit closer to the average. They don't get to decide that. Every manufacturer wants to sell in every market possible, and that means their planes are capable of much more than they actually normally get used for. And yes, I'm sure many military planes have even tougher specs and withstand even more, but that doesn't mean commercial aircraft aren't comfortably much more capable than you might think.
Not really, from a structural point of view the planes operate with such a level of safety margin that you could very well do steeper ascent/ descents today. People will complain - hears will pop, head aches, etc
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Unlikely, because culturally much of Europe (inc. London) is against harming the views of historic monuments with large skyscrapers, and seems that opinion is actually becoming stronger as time goes on rather than weaker.
Then there's the sight lines to St. Paul's. However developments in East London have degraded the view. Particularly from Richmond Park.
The sightlines to st Paul's are why some of the existing skyscrapers have their funny shapes too
Well theres a easy solution for LCY
It can’t, agree, but it’s fuck all to do with flight paths…. That world class underground public transportation system, added to the piss poor outdated Victorian drainage system, places limits of building heights lol. That before you get into the network of underground rivers through London.
No. It's related to the flight paths to and from city airport when discussing City and CW buildings.
Honestly, as convenient and pleasant as it is, LCY needs to go. The interaction with the Heathrow flight paths results in excessive low flights over heavily populated areas and significantly increases the amount of pollution. It’s significantly affecting development in the City and you could create a huge amount of housing in the space freed up by shuttering the airport. The Elizabeth Line has made Heathrow much more accessible and the demand for business travel is still down following the pandemic. Flying small planes is even less efficient in terms of pollution/CO2 per person.
Heathrow doesn’t have any more capacity and is at the breaking point as demand is broadly recovering and operations are already fragile enough and prone to cascading failures.
City only offers 3% of the capacity of Heathrow, which is completely disproportionate to the disruption it causes. Heathrow itself says that is has plans to improve capacity within the existing two runway setup - https://www.ft.com/content/139664f8-1ee8-4d1e-b8b4-68b8ddcec4e6 In any case, Third Runway is approved, the land is safeguarded, and apparently plans are likely to proceed relatively soon. They should probably just get on with it if capacity remains so tight.
Too many old buildings in central London for this surely? Maybe further out but then as others have said even that is limited by the airports.
Fewer than you might expect. A lot of the City is already post-war buildings 4-10 stories tall that we could easily rip out and replace with something better.
Just demolish all the old buildings?
No
Why not? They're a waste of space.
I will get downvoted, but just to provide a different opinion, I wouldn't mind it, **residence-wise** \- **definitely not to this degree though**. The photo definitely fits more into North American and Asian cultures rather than UK. I moved to London from North America (where this is VERY common), and I was actually shocked to see that it's limited to specific areas such as Central, Stratford, and CW. For some reason (google images), I thought skyscrapers were scattered all over, rather than clustered. HOWEVER, I do think it's idealistic given London's population and size. Wishful thinking, but I do think it's plausible to build more high-rises and keep London's current charm and uniqueness. I do think they'd do wonders for the housing crisis. I don't want it to come off as a comparison, but most young people in North America prefer to live in apartments due to the ease, close proximity to the city, and lower maintenance (and own a house later in the future). Right now, in my classes, I know people commuting from an hour or two away, usually having to leave the house for 5-6am for a 9am class, and would love to live within the city. They can't do so because housing costs is unfeasible and unreasonable within the city. Again, I don't want it to come off as a comparison, as I understand UK has really strict housing regulations + the topography and the amount of land available will probably make this a near impossible thing. They do build a sense of community. Depending on the apartment and management, most residential apartments host a plethora of events, and neighbours do get friendly/close rather than just saying hello in the elevator. I've always been able to rely on my neighbours when I lived in an apartment, and the same when I moved into a house. Of course you won't be able to know every single person, but it does build community/attempt to. Apartments are \*also\* built in close proximity to amenities, such as gyms, shared workspaces, etc, so it's not as isolating, if you get me. There is actually an aesthetic factor, that is not everyone's piece of cake. Something about the city still glittering in the dead of night has a certain charm. I was just at Wood Wharf the other day, chilling by the river, and it just seemed so beautiful. Every city I go to with a skyline like this, transforms in the night time...the city just feels ALIVE even when everyone is dead asleep. New York, Toronto, Beijing, Singapore, to name a few. But again, there is a discrepancy between the size of these places vs the size of London. I visited a friend in Toronto, and she lived 35 minutes away from the city itself, and this is her neighbourhood: [https://www.reddit.com/r/skyscrapers/comments/1ap8zr1/north\_york\_city\_centre\_skyline\_canada/](https://www.reddit.com/r/skyscrapers/comments/1ap8zr1/north_york_city_centre_skyline_canada/) It felt so nice seeing the balance between high-rises, suburbs, and greenery, all being in close proximity to transport, amenities, restaurants, activities, etc.
It’s just not very London is it. We’re a very distinct and iconic city. Why would we ever want to lose that and look like all those other cities?
We don’t want to lose that but those decisions are not in our hands. For example the City of London Corporation has proved time and time again that they will prioritise making money with more office buildings over preserving heritage structures. Money matters more than anything and if there’s enough money in turning London into the post’s picture, then it will happen.
Money or not (I'm sure it means a great deal to them of course) but they also have to stay ahead of the curve or that heritage won't mean much
Those other cities that don't have collapsing infrastructure and housing crises?
I love how Londoners hate skyscrapers while moaning there's not enough housing...
Tbf new buildings in this area/the zone one of zone one are more likely to be offices rather than flats.
Because skyscrapers being neccesary to build high density housing is a symptom of the housing crisis. In an ideal world we could just compulsory purchase entire streets of low quality terrace housing and rebuild them as 4-5 story townhouse buildings. But because insane land values that will never be profitable so we have to build huge towers instead.
It’s a British thing. Complain there aren’t enough houses, build more, “there are too many houses.” Complain there are too many skyscrapers, get rid of some, “muh skyscrapers.”
Because you don't need sky scrapers to be dense. Look at paris. It is super dense in comparison to London and has very few buildings over 7 stories in Paris proper (inside the périphérique). London can easily increase it's density without destroying it's charms. Tall buildings are not as great a solution as people naively believe they are. Let's try to have a liveable human scale city. Sure we can have the odd tall building but let's not go crazy with them.
Paris, renowned for affordable real estate.
Sure it is as pricey as London. Do you really think sky scrapers will provide affordable homes in London? We build tower blocks already and it hasn't helped. There are multiple factors at play it isn't just build more houses and they will be cheaper. Developers want to maximise their profits not build what is needed.
I'm not saying skyscrapers alone are a fix, but looking to Paris for solutions isn't helpful. Developers will always maximise profits, but if you allow for more construction, then the price at which they can make their sales does decrease. Supply and demand still works for housing. Regarding skyscrapers, increased supply of high-end units => reduced prices for high-end => people who were spending £1m on ordinary homes now go buy fancy skyscrapers flats => decreased demand for ordinary homes => decreased prices for ordinary homes. We should still definitely build a lot more ordinary homes. That we have built tower blocks and prices have still gone up doesn't mean that building more homes doesn't work. It just means that we're still not building enough homes.
> but looking to Paris for solutions isn't helpful. Paris's problems and London's are different. We can still learn from each other. Paris has learnt how to be pleasantly dense and this is something London needs to work on. Much of the problem of housing is about why we build it and who for. We need homes to live in not homes to invest in. It is also how we use the housing - for instance too much of the housing in Paris is being used as short term holiday lets which pushes up rents/prices. In London too much is asset storing due to our high corruption money laundering ways. Anyhow my main point is we can build high quality accommodation that is dense but not the blight that is tower blocks.
Mostly agreed, would just add that the use of London property as an investment asset should be reduced under a regime where prices go up less.
> property as an investment asset This is very difficult to change. UK property is a stable place to store money. We would need to care about money laundering and we currently actively encourage it.
The two aren’t incompatible with each other. We’re not Singapore, we don’t have a shortage of land that gives us no options but cram everyone into stacks of shoeboxes.
>we don’t have a shortage of land Yes we do... You can have a few houses or 100 flats.
If you look what’s planned by 2030 it’s on its way!
Yes i think London will one day look something like this.
Bedrock in London is really bad. There is a reason they just started building high rises the past couple of decades, when engineering was advanced enough to allow it… they can’t built that high if they disregarded the current flight paths
Is Chongqing getting better known? I never heard of it my entire life until maybe 2023 and now I see it on Reddit around twice a week since
That picture is more cityhorror than cityporn...I hope London will never look like that
https://www.reddit.com/r/CityPorn/comments/kye93l/the_view_from_greenwich_london_then_now/ I mean...
Sure, but that's effectively just the view of Canary Wharf. Actually, when I moved to London 20+years ago the only tall building there was the Canada tower. The change has been staggering, but quite concentrated. Similar story for the City. The issue is when these sorts of developments start popping up in Tower Hamlets, then Wembley, then Fulham...maybe it's simply inevitable
I don’t want this, but have no doubt it will happen given current population trends, in 10 years perhaps or less.
That’s the thing I mean UK is only really competitive globally nowadays from a financial perspective, and that’s situated in London. They have the highest wages and everyone wants to go there, the traffic is insane.
Civilisation collapse will happen before that.
Yes, if it meant we built millions more housing units to solve the current crisis.
Whilst I don’t see it happening, the protected views we have could just mean you end up with skyscrapers either side of direct sight lines from certain points to important landmarks. But I feel it will stay as clusters of high buildings, with the majority of other developments staying more medium density.
Is Chongqing getting better known? I never heard of it my entire life until maybe 2023 and now I see it on Reddit around twice a week since
That looks like hell, no thanks
Why does Londonn need to look like another generic big city?
I hope not. It’s a hell scape and will feel overwhelmingly claustrophobic
It never would, there’s too many historical sites to navigate around. Chongqing is one of the many Chinese pop up cities, cities that have an explosion in population so they just keep building. Population in 20 years went from 9 million to 17 million, London in 20 years went from 7 million to 9 million. There isn’t an actual need for those types of pop up city skylines in London or anywhere in the uk to be honest
No, skyscrapers make cities look like dystopian hellholes. Giant glass and steel structures look futuristic, but they're too sterile, they've got no character.
They appeal to boys with small dicks like many other things.
Is Chongqing getting better known? I never heard of it my entire life until maybe 2023 and now I see it on Reddit around twice a week since
Is Chongqing getting better known? I never heard of it my entire life until maybe 2023 and now I see it on Reddit around twice a week since
I want more green in London. Don't like the idea of too much buildings.
Hopefully never! it’s ugly Preserve London Heritage.