Why there are no skyscrapers in Europe?
By: Anush Pv
Tags: London, Paris, Europe, Skyscraper, Urban Planning

These are what the major cities in Asia look like.

From Shanghai, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo and many other cities have similar skylines and urban planning.

These are what the major cities in the Middle East look like Dubai, Doha Kuwait and others have forests of skyscrapers.

Interestingly if we go to Europe in comparison with major Asian, Middle Eastern, North American cities, Europe especially the western part doesn’t like to build or to be known for skyscrapers.

What is a skyscraper?

A skyscraper is defined as a multi-story building at least 100 meters tall sometimes depending on who you ask it can be 150 meters.

In the list of hundred cities in the world with the most skyscrapers, only five European cities, namely, Moscow, Istanbul, London, Frankfurt and Paris made the list. Moscow being top in Europe is not even in top 15 globally. 8 out of 10 highest buildings in the European continent are flocked in Russia. Most of them are in Moscow.

The second with the most skyscrapers is Istanbul. Skyscrapers are known as a proxy for economic power and visual financial muscle of the country. Well, Moscow and Istanbul are not exactly part of the economic powerhouse of the European continent.

For example, London is considered as the financial capital of Europe. Even the city of Honolulu on the island of Hawaii has more skyscrapers than London.

Why Europe Doesn’t Build Skyscrapers?

Historically, most European cities were founded in the middle ages, some of them thousands of years ago and the churches were the highest and most important buildings of all, signifying the heritage and culture.

The scale of skyscrapers would often strongly influence and disturb the perception of historic cities just because they dominate the skyline and overall view of the cities.

In 1940, even the fascist government of Italy was worried that Italy’s churches and monuments could be destroyed by bombings and invasion. So, they started to reinforce building walls around them and this is how Santa Croce church in Lecce was fortified.

Not only churches are important in Europe but also other historical buildings and their often subtle relationship to each other and to the landscape hills and lakes. Generally, there are a lot of people in European cities who live in houses and apartments that are older than the United States of America. So, cities like London and Paris have fairly strict laws on the height of the buildings in order to protect the ice static of the cities.

London has no less than 50,000 protected buildings. rising each year with automatic age listing and the impact constructing a tall building right next to them would have on the locality that would easily ignite the local “not in my backyard” movement.

What is Protected View?

Additionally, in London there is something called a protected view. There are 14 protected views in total and they include the need to be able to see St. Paul’s Cathedral from Alexandria Palace. Other protected views focus on the Palace of Westminster, Buckingham and so on.

London is traversed by no less than 14 huge viewing corridors to famous viewpoints often two cities, five UNESCO World Heritage Sites, five Cathedrals, six Palaces and three castles. The result is that ,there is a complex three-dimensional grid above Central London through which architects must not build.

But the architects of the financial skyscrapers in the city of London have risen to the challenge and came up with some impressive workarounds. The Leadenhall building, for example, has a distinctive cheese crater shape which actually allows to lean out of the way of one of the protected views but this disdain to skyscrapers especially in London has a drawback and creates a huge paradox and a problem. The UK has a policy for metropolitan areas called a green belt.

What is green belt?

The green belt is intended to prevent urban sprawl and protect towns and villages merging to each other and losing their identity. This sounds great, but, in the long run, as the population keeps growing more and more people get crammed into a small place. Rent prices will go through the roof and for average middle class family apartments get tinier and tinier and eventually it will become a little shoebox. So this is one of the reasons why London has the most expensive rental accommodation in Europe followed by Zurich, Moscow and Geneva, according to the Accommodation Ranking Report by ECA international.

The only way for London is to go up to build skyscrapers. this way nice and spacious apartments become affordable. So keeping the visual impression of London and the view of its cultural sites has a huge downside for Londoners and expats.

Paris

Interestingly, in Paris there are even stricter laws. Tall towers are all but banned within the city which allows features like the Eiffel tower unless invalidities to send out in the cityscape. The one proper skyscraper within the city is toward Montparnasse Tower and it’s almost universally hated and is generally considered an eyesore.

Parisians say the best view of Paris is from the top of the Tour Montparnasse because it’s the only place in Paris that you can’t see the Tour Montparnasse. Parisians quickly realized that skyscrapers were spoiling the spirit of their city and they imposed strict zoning regulations that did not allow any buildings over 37 meters tall to be built. This is to preserve the character of the city and was enacted shortly after the Tour Montparnasse was built in 1977 which is 210 meters tall. The area of La Défense which is outside of the Paris city limits is the location of Paris’ financial district and does have its fair share of skyscrapers but it’s considered far enough a way not to ruin the view of Paris.

London has something similar to a secondary financial district in the Canary Wharf area. But unlike London, the government of France has allowed urban sprawl around the city and rent prices are relatively cheaper than London despite Paris being considered as the most expensive city to live in.

Why Europeans don’t like Skyscrapers?

Why do Europeans hate skyscrapers even though it makes life much easier. This disdain for skyscrapers in Europeans began in 1960s when Brussels was hosting Expo.

What is Brusselization?

Expo is a huge event. So, the Belgium government was demolishing huge blocks of historical buildings in order to give land to skyscrapers to be built disregarding historical sites and buildings and this has been termed as Brusselization.

This label doesn’t solely apply to Brussels rather it can denote any place where uncontrolled growth emerged from lack of zoning regulations and lazy fairy approach to urban development.

Geographical Problem

But, in some cases like Berlin, the situation is different. The reason may be the lack of firm ground. For example, New York City stands on a firm granite which doesn’t let the city to sink. But, in Berlin, the entire city is built on muddy ground that reaches up to 80 meters deep. All high-rise buildings are kind of a floating vessel.

Carving through the muddy ground and building the foundation first is a very expensive challenge that urban sprawling is much cheaper for Berlin. At this point you might be thinking about Shanghai which was built on a muddy ground too but filled with skyscrapers. It’s been now decades that Shanghai is sinking and currently 30 of its subsidence can be attributed to the skyscrapers. China decided to go ahead anyway because the main justification for it is, in Shanghai, could be that the population density is such that land prices skyrocket and make it too attractive to build overcoming planning objections.

Another probably the biggest reason why there are no skyscrapers in Europe, zoning regulations are advertised as something good. Preserving the culture, heritage and all that but often it goes down to cronyism. There are the cronies who benefit from zoning regulations and lobby for them.

If skyscrapers are allowed, there will be far more apartments and office spaces available which in turn will push down the cost of rent because there is no supply. It will depress the value of the existing properties.

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