To build or not to build

When it comes to the skyline, do we need to know when to say 'enough is enough', asks John Goodall

- John Goodall

LONDON is perpetually in the throes of planning battles. The evidence of our eyes is that, for all the complaints that developers make about the undoubted burdens of the planning system, it is their buccaneering spirit that generally wins the day.

That can give rise to outstanding additions to the capital, but it comes with two inter-related problems. The first is that the well-thought-through development proposals of today immediately become the starting point for the poorly planned and greedy applications of tomorrow.

The most startling illustration of this is the sheer quantity of totally unremarkable high-rise blocks that have sprung up like weeds around the handful of interesting buildings that have effectively pioneered London's modern skyline. Second, that a successful development inevitably engenders more.

Trying to work out in advance, however, what constitutes overdevelopment is almost impossible, particularly as new proposals naturally tend to focus on free space, the benefits of which are hard to measure or articulate.