Revised and updated to reflect changes to the planning system and CABE's and English Heritage's experience of evaluating planning applications for tall buildings.
Cities and their skylines evolve. In the right place, tall buildings can make positive contributions to city life. They can be excellent works of architecture in their own right; some of the best post-war examples are now listed buildings. Individually, or in groups, they affect the image and identity of a city as a whole. In the right place they can serve as beacons of regeneration, and stimulate further investment. The design and construction of innovative tall buildings can also serve to extend the frontiers of building and environmental technology.
However, by virtue of their size and prominence, such buildings can also harm the qualities that people value about a place. Where tall buildings have proved unpopular, this has generally been for specific rather than abstract or general reasons. In many cases one of the principal failings is that many were designed with a lack of appreciation or understanding of the context in which they were to sit. There have been too many examples of tall buildings that have been unsuitably sited, poorly designed and detailed, badly built or incompetently managed (although this has been equally true of many low-rise buildings). The existence of a tall building in a particular location will not of itself justify its replacement with a new tall building on the same site or in the same area. The same process of analysis and justification should be required.
CABE and English Heritage have reviewed and updated their joint Guidance on tall buildings to reflect changes to the planning system and their experience of evaluating planning applications for tall buildings.