Why no tall buildings in Britain?

[mowque]

In my TL I have a intense USA-UK rivalry (not quite Cold War level) and some hostility from the 1900's to maybe the 40s and 50s. After thinking of ways for them to 'challenge' each other and compete I thought of maybe building tall buildings. Both are rich industrious nations with lots of urban space. At the time tall buildings were a sign of economic prosperity and industrial might. But after doing some research...

Britain has very few tall buildings and nearly no skyscrapers! At no point in the 1900s did Britain have any buildings anywhere near the top three. Why was this? Is it ASB to have Britain get caught into a 'tall race' with the Americans? Do British people have something against tall buildings?

 

[von kressenstein]

In my TL I have a intense USA-UK rivalry (not quite Cold War level) and some hostility from the 1900's to maybe the 40s and 50s. After thinking of ways for them to 'challenge' each other and compete I thought of maybe building tall buildings. Both are rich industrious nations with lots of urban space. At the time tall buildings were a sign of economic prosperity and industrial might. But after doing some research...

Britain has very few tall buildings and nearly no skyscrapers! At no point in the 1900s did Britain have any buildings anywhere near the top three. Why was this? Is it ASB to have Britain get caught into a 'tall race' with the Americans? Do British people have something against tall buildings?

heh.. i had an inappropriate male comparison to offer. I think that i would chalk it up to the crown was buys maintaining empire vs. Building tall skyscrapers

 

[Wanderlust]

I just think we've never really had the need for them, until recently; Part of building tall buildings is boosting national esteem and creating landmarks; we've historically thought quite alright about our status, and our history has furnished us with many lovely landmarks already. Indeed, London's (and the lesser cities) opposition to skyscrapers has often been based on preserving the historic skyline. Property prices have steadily been going up though, which is why now you see 1 Canada Square, The Gherkin, and a whole raft of proposed new giant phalluses in the works.

 

[NKVD]

Tall buildings are dangerous, people could fall from them.

 

[mowque]

I just think we've never really had the need for them, until recently;.

No high land prices in London or other big cities?

 

[Wanderlust]

No high land prices in London or other big cities?

Not high enough to justify the human, material and aesthetic cost of building tall, complicated, ugly and dangerous buildings... Especially when you could set up a nice new office in a warm sunny pace instead

But as I said, recently (last 100 years or so) costs have gotten high enough to justify the big things. So hello Shell building, Battersea Power Station et al.

 

[David S Poepoe]

The first skyscaper was about 285 feet tall, so by any definition Britain has tall buildings. I don't know what your particular definition is. There are a lot of reasons that come to mind why skyscapers are higher in the US, the biggest being the availibility of land within cities.

On the other hand there are very few 300 year old buildings in the US.

 

[mowque]

I didn't mean it as a negative thing! Just saying, even the industrial parts of Britain seemed to skip over that period of frantic massive building that the USA indulged in. Even Birmingham, when it went through the Steel Phase, built a bunch of big buildings in Alabama of all places.

So low land prices and high building costs?

 

[Wanderlust]

So low land prices and high building costs?

I'd put land prices below all the other reasons I listed, really.

Britain just didn't have the need to prove itself with grand masterworks at the time that America felt the need to. You don't otherwise just go around building things 'just because you can' (not to say we haven't on occasion, but y'know).

 

[TheNordicBrit]

My personal opinion is that our cities are busting, and we're not willing to pull down the beautiful architecture of old in the city of London (or any older towns).

 

[Arachnid]

I actually heard the reason for this in an urban history course I did a while ago.

Most US cties are on net grid with quite large blocks of land so that if you want to put up a great big sky scraper you only have to buy out a few people.

Most UK cities are unplanned and rather than neat grids you have a mess meaning its a lot more difficult to get 500 square meters together to build one

 

[King Gorilla]

I actually heard the reason for this in an urban history course I did a while ago.

Most US cties are on net grid with quite large blocks of land so that if you want to put up a great big sky scraper you only have to buy out a few people.

Most UK cities are unplanned and rather than neat grids you have a mess meaning its a lot more difficult to get 500 square meters together to build one

Bravo we have a winner

 

[NomadicSky]

I just think we've never really had the need for them, until recently; Part of building tall buildings is boosting national esteem and creating landmarks; we've historically thought quite alright about our status, and our history has furnished us with many lovely landmarks already. Indeed, London's (and the lesser cities) opposition to skyscrapers has often been based on preserving the historic skyline. Property prices have steadily been going up though, which is why now you see 1 Canada Square, The Gherkin, and a whole raft of proposed new giant phalluses in the works.

The Gherkin really does look like a giant sex toy. Its neat looking though, like a fabriche dildo.

 

[Sachyriel]

The British take to the skies above their empire in a different way:

I mean why build your own buildings when you can just blow up everyone else's?

However maybe you could have a British tower the tallest. It would just be in the the province of Ontario, in TO. Say the unmentionable sea mammal works (Operation Sealion to those newbs who don't know what I speak of) and the UK is evacuated in 194-something, the Royal Family is in residence in Ottawa. It has the effect of making the entire nation feel oh-so-close to the Royal Family so that after the war (and the UK is liberated) when the CN Tower is built it's actually named after the Queen. And yeah, not exactly the thing that most would identify with the Queen, a large pointy stick, but she likes it. The "Canadian National" Tower, built by a railroad company and it becomes the CN Tower in construction, officially becoming "CN Queen Tower" when it becomes the tallest structure. Instead of being sold by the Canadian National Railway company when it gets privatized in 1995, the Tower can be sold to the UK for cheap, and the Canadian government recognizes that the Queens Tower in TO, being the tallest structure in the world, should be ceded to the UK; The land around it gets the same status as the Embassy, Britain has the land, blah blah blah, the Queen visits but due to security doesn't go up.

But you can hardly blame her for not wanting to go up there. I'm from TO in OTL, and I don't even want to go up there.

 

[Alex Richards]

It's not just London. It's Europe in General. Until the 20th Century there were very few supertall structures (Eiffel Tower springs to mind. That's it) After WWII a combination of Futurist architects, higher land prices and urban renewal led to some taller buildings being built, but as many (particularly Britains flats) were poorly thought out or constructed they never caught on.

 

[Astrodragon]

I'm not sure if its correct, but one reason I heard of London vs New York is the ground. NY is granite, London is clay. While nowadays this isnt an issue, when they were building the early skyscrapers the clay foundation was a big problem.

 

[Wanderlust]

The Gherkin really does look like a giant sex toy. Its neat looking though, like a fabriche dildo.

At least we're honest!

 

[Fellatio Nelson]

I actually heard the reason for this in an urban history course I did a while ago.

Most US cties are on net grid with quite large blocks of land so that if you want to put up a great big sky scraper you only have to buy out a few people.

Most UK cities are unplanned and rather than neat grids you have a mess meaning its a lot more difficult to get 500 square meters together to build one

I'd also add to that the lack of building space on Manhatten Island, that originally compelled builders to go upwards. Once that had begun, using the fancy new building techniques - skyscrapers were impossible to build out of just bricks and mortar - every millionaire businessmen and city in the 1930s wanted one as a status symbol.

 

[Alratan]

It's impossible in London, and no where else was wealthy/expensive enough to justify it. There are a whole set of Acts of Parliament defining so called "Protected views" which have to be retained, so that nothing taller than a certain land mark can be seen if one looks out from a specified vantage point.

If you get an earlier green belt movement, which hems London and other cities in, combined with greater success of the industrialists at getting chimneys permitted to be built in London, that might work. This probably needs earlier rural romanticism combined with early reform of the House of Lords.

 

[Peter]

No high land prices in London or other big cities?

High buildings are - as a rule - for countries with no or little heritage. Its good for a culture-less country like the US or those whose cities are wholly inadequate for modern adoption, like the Chinese.* Of course we could have built skyscrapers in Europe, but what would have been the point? Or cities are already largely built, and the skyscraper would just ruin the city-character. It wouldn't be an improvement but a degeneration to a lower level of civilization.

*The architectural massacres going on in China right now is a pity, but understandable, since the cost of modernizing existent housing is at the moment way to large, considering the level of economic development and the rapid pace of urbanization.