A Japanese developer has announced it will demolish a new tower of luxury flats in Tokyo it was weeks from completing. The reason? The 10-storey development was blocking beautiful views of Mount Fuji. The idea a developer would reach such a decision in Britain is inconceivable. In London, flats are usually built to make a profit. If they have a beautiful view, good luck to those buying them. To hell with anyone else’s beauty.
One of what we assume was the Sunak government’s last decisions was Michael Gove’s greenlighting of a huge 20-storey concrete slab that is about to rise on the banks of the Thames next to the National Theatre. It is hideous, and will dominate the once-glorious view of St Paul’s cathedral from Waterloo Bridge. Paradoxically, its developer is the Mitsubishi Corporation.
Beauty is a word you never hear in British election campaigns. They are a festival of philistinism, about money and little else. In Tokyo, the dignified regulation of the public sector matters. Maintaining the beauty of the environment is not a fey, nimby fad, but a duty expected of government in the public’s interest and pleasure.
Cut to the Thames, a few miles west from Gove’s slab. The current collapse of planning control in the capital has seen two Nine Elms towers rise almost 60 storeys,........