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, reducing Big Ben to the size of a toothpick in comparison.
Last week, another “luxury” monster was announced up-river, next to Battersea Park. The company behind the scheme is a subsidi.