Look to Paris, they are doing it right.

Who tf even says this?

After London becomes the bad version of Dubai, anyone who compares the two cities and still states London as the worse version, should be exiled to Dubai.

Love London or Leave! (just like the USA)

It seem to me that Alain de Botton is speaking as someone who loves London very much, and doesn't want to see it ruined. 

Whenever I see that Ferris wheel next to Parliament it always makes me a little sad.

260 towers doesn't seem like that much.

anyone who is truly in love with their city would refuse to acknowledge its downfalls as negative components. when you love something, you adore its flaws.

thats just not my style...

if all I did was talk about negative criticisms I have on my wife, some people could interpret that as true love. but others would see it as the first entries files on my divorce paperwork, and would probably find me cheating on her with my attractive neighbor named Paris.

if you love London, deal with its downfalls. interpret them as part of the character you love in the city. if you love something so much that you want to change it - that doesn't qualify as love, in my opinion.

So you'd be fine with just letting its recent flaws accumulate, year after year, and it getting worse and worse, without doing anything about it?

So next week, if my wife, say... started shooting heroin, you'd recommend that I either accept it as one of her lovable flaws, or divorce her?  Identifying it as a problem, and trying to help her back to the way she was would be a sign that I didn't truly love her? 

"Everything is awesome!"

I'm only responding because we could make this a really interesting, introspective debate...I'm sure you'll just find my post unnecessarily annoying though because it's essentially irrelevent and only hypothetical...

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...if your wife began doing things destructive to her health, like heroine, in my opinion she was predisposed to do such; it wasnt an overnight polarization where she was initially strictly against using any substance destructive to her health. so more explicitly, before you shoot heroine, you smoke cigarettes. I would have to believe 99.99+% of heroine users tried a cigarette before they tried heroine...and many of them would already have experience with less destructive amphetamines before they fulfilled their curiousity on something like heroine. so part of their personality was already predispositioned to entertain the thought of causing destruction to their body in some way, and this is a subconscious quality that you fell in love with, because it makes up the holistic manifestation of who they are as a person; you can't have the good without the bad. another thing to consider is that you might consider their heroine use bad or destructive, when they might consider it medicinal and necessary for their pursuit of happiness - and so this is a subjective affair.

hypothetically, if you prompted your wife to stop shooting heroine, but she was happier with herself while high and preferred this way of life, she might be led to divorce YOU for being so controlling (ironically).

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every city's subjective negative qualities help amount to its overall character. people who actually love a city, love it for the city's overall character - not just a few select features.

but I think at the end of the day I agree with you, EKE (and de Botton), sorry for hijacking this thread.

Look to Paris, they are doing it right.

Not any more.

Well, lets hope it doesn't get built. de Meuron jumped the shark with the birds nest stadium, a giant waste of money that cost the Chinese well over a million annually just to keep it standing empty. It is as if Shigeru Ban built an aids clinic out of paper and nobody came to die.

I think we went way too far down the "wife analogy" path.  :)

By the way, my favorite part of the video is the Walkie Talkie building incinerating people with its death rays.  Perfect.

I love that the Walkie Talkie is now being called the Walkie Scorchie. 

My city isn't getting aggressively designed towers, just a lot of too-big apartment buildings (many with first floor national chain retail/restaurants) clad with a hodgepodge of cheap facade materials. How can city planning departments say no more often - is increasing the tax base part of their mandate?

I wonder how much of this dismay (as voiced by London residents generally and not specifically de Botton) is due to class conflict, in that the new developments are largely luxury units in an increasingly overpriced city. De Botton compares the rising skyline to Dubai, Singapore or Shanghai... but my impression is that residents of those cities tend to be quite proud of the development. Isit a cultural difference in taste - or is it reflective of a less polarized distinction between the public and occupants of the new towers.

Personally, I view the towers in London as mostly well designed, aesthetically interesting and urbanistically sensitive. I imagine future generations will enjoy these towers in the same way New Yorkers enjoy the profusion of great and mediocre art deco and neoclassical towers in Manhattan.

If class conflict is the basis of the problem, and unaffordable property values the most serious effect maybe this is something that should be addressed by zoning. Instead of FAR limits, limits on individual unit sizes and overall height might keep the market closer to middle class norms.

Midlander, the mythologies produced in Dubia are very complex to say the least. 

BR.TN, I think (I hope) I understand your sentiments, but respectfully disagree. I will not continue with the analogy of the spouse in favor of the parent. When you sit your child down "for a talk," it is a conversation that is grounded in love and expectation. "You can do better" is something not said with hate, but with pride and a knowledge of that child's capabilities because you are in part responsible for those accomplishment already made.

Cites and nations are made by people as well. And while they are not children, we can always expect more of them. The question remains what is best.