ABSTRACT
In recent years there has been increasing concern amongst built environment professionals internationally about development proposals for tall buildings and their potential impact on the fabric of our cities. Booming cities in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have witnessed significant numbers of tall buildings being proposed, in part fuelled by cities’ inter-urban competition (Pløger, 2010; Sklair, 2006). In many instances, planners have had to respond to these proposals using outof-date or inadequate planning frameworks and have often worked under pressure from politicians to approve tangible symbols of economic growth. At the heart of the debate about the appropriateness of specific tall building proposals is their impact and effect on existing townscapes in general, and more specifically, protected buildings and areas; should planning frameworks encourage the siting of towers in appropriate locations, and if so, how do we decide where these locations should be? Should proposals be actively discouraged through such frameworks where they might harm the character, or distinctiveness, of a specific place, area or monument? Cities are responding to the tall building challenge on a spectrum that ranges from outright opposition to wholehearted embrace with planning as the basis for negotiation over specific proposals.
