“It really pisses me off,” Clark said while standing in the plaza in front of the Flatiron Building on Fifth Avenue, a few blocks south of the dueling skyscrapers. “The whole New York skyline has been destroyed. When I moved here I was thrilled with it, and now it’s just getting disgusting. These new buildings have no identity, no design to them. We’ve lost the character of New York, and it breaks my heart.” — The Guardian

A generation ago, the New York skyline was a global icon, shaped more or less like a suspension bridge stretched between the Empire State and the Twin Towers, making it possible to, say, pop out of some unfamiliar subway station, gaze up toward the clouds and orient oneself along the skyline’s north-south axis. Today, the skyline is vastly more complex, far-flung and difficult to picture, and it’s common to hear complaints that the city has lost its bearings. — The New York Times

The first guests at western Europe’s tallest hotel came expecting unforgettable views – but may have got more than they bargained for.

The bedrooms in Shangri-La’s luxury hotel, which opened last week in London’s 310m-tall Shard building, come with binoculars so guests can survey the city’s landmarks through the floor-to-ceiling windows. But thanks to a quirk in the building’s design, some rooms also come with potentially revealing views of other guests. — ft.com

There is an argument, however, that view anxiety is just indulgent, naive sentiment. Nostalgia, after all, was originally defined as an illness. The English may have invented the idea of the picturesque, which gives us a special attachment to an 18th-century notion of visual delight. [...] And what exactly is the difference between the hated wind turbine [...] and the delightful 18th-century windmills that John Constable painted? His were industrial scenes. Constable was a modern man. — telegraph.co.uk