What’s bad for the City is good for the skyline

I kept them against the day when they might pay for, say, some new furniture. I'm not sure what to do with them now: frame the certificate as a memento of the historic times we live in? Or just blow the lot in the chip shop?

Similarly, many property developers will not know what to do with the glossy computer images they have of towers which will now not be built. Like share certificates, they held promise for a future which will not arrive.

For the best part of a decade, developers have sought the services of some of the world's most glamorous architects to garnish with "iconic" design their pillars of ego and mammon. Millions were spent on the computer images, on lawyers at public inquiries and on a dark art known as "planning consultancy" that blossomed in the boom.

Some of these designs were elegant, some less so, but taken together they would have made a queasy mixture, optimistically described as "a fruit bowl". It would not have been a credit to the foresight or wisdom of London's planners, nor convincing evidence of the architecturally brilliant city we supposedly inhabited.

But opposition was swept aside, as was any suggestion that some kind of overall plan might be helpful. London's economic vitality was at stake, it was argued. Just as we were invited to believe in the limitless wisdom of banks, so we had to accept the inevitability of towers.

Yet the amazing fact is that precisely none of these higher towers, bar the special case of the Gherkin, has actually been built. London's boom shot up and fell to earth completely unaided by the prestige or floor space of these argued-over skyscrapers. It would have been more useful, in the days of the overheated market, if lower, easier-to-build blocks had been put up instead. The proposed skyscrapers were economically irrelevant. 

One or two towers will now get built with the help of Middle East oil money. In the City, sites are being cleared for the Heron Tower, Richard Rogers's Leadenhall Building, and The Pinnacle, or "helter skelter", although the real proof of these projects will be when and if foundations are dug and concrete frames go up. Other projects have been cancelled for ever.

When the good times come back, we should remember these bogus arguments and never again give them the time of day. Even better, the city's planners could use the slack time to plan London's growth in the future. As for those computer images, as historic as old hunting scenes, they would look nice framed and put on the walls of a themed restaurant, or made into place mats.