The government might put the brakes on London Mayor Ken Livingstone’s love affair with tall new buildings. According to the Standard, the Department of Culture may tightened the rules on where huge glass office towers can be sited in central London due to pressure from UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) which designates the World Heritage sites and is concerned that new buildings proposed or being constructed are having a negative impact on some of London’s most important historical sites.
For an oldtime socialist the Mayor loves getting tight with developers and last month the government where talking about giving him greater control over planning laws in the whole of London. One project he’s been backing is two large towers at Victoria which would rise up behind Buckingham Palace and completely alter the visual appearance of that part of London as there are no really tall blocks there at the moment.
I’m not against building tall office blocks, Canary Wharf is a fantastic development, but that didn’t impact on anything around it. The Mayor might want to go for a mini Manhattan look but the West End and that part of the Thames is not the place to site it, there’s too much other architecture that’s been around for a long time that doesn’t need to be over shadowed. It’ll be interesting to see who wins out in the planning wars.
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