It isn’t a commonplace for me to agree with Simon Jenkins, but I’ll make an exception for this in the Guardian a couple of days ago.
Around 500 towers are proposed for London. They’re not just ugly:
they symbolise Britain’s greedy pandering to developers
Having said that, I don’t know where he gets his information “towers rarely offer higher densities than traditional Victorian terraces in their neighbourhoods”, which I find inherently unlikely.
In my view, no building should be more than four or five floors above ground, if only from a safety point of view. And let’s use up all the brownfield sites and under-used office blocks before building more; much more environmentally sound than taking out yet more greenfield land.
And while we’re at it, let’s require every developer, large or small, to plant at least one tree for every dwelling, and five (or even ten) for every floor of offices, with 50% of them within a mile of the property. That would be good for both carbon sequestration and for mental health.