A proposed new 36-storey tower at Archway has raised the question of who owns London’s skyline? As Londoners, we like to claim it as ours, but it appears the skyline of our city is up for grabs.

According to 'A Call for a Tall Buildings Policy' published by the think tank Policy Exchange, 41% of Londoners believe tall buildings have made London’s skyline worse. Co-founder Michael Gove is now Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities - ultimately the arbiter of planning appeals.

I was reassured to read it should, “ensure that tall buildings inflict no further harm to London’s traditional international reputation as a low to medium-rise city whose charm rests in its unique ability to distil mass urbanism into a more intimate, domesticated and human scale”.

Ham & High: David Porter says places are made on the ground, under our feet and not in the skyDavid Porter says places are made on the ground, under our feet and not in the sky (Image: Highgate Society)

If Policy Exchange is guiding current government thinking on planning policy with an emphasis on beauty and ‘place-making’ – who would argue with that? However, places are made on the ground, under our feet, not in the sky. The way the Empire State building ‘scrapes’ the sky is “oh, so memorable”, but can anyone remember how it meets the ground?

What matters about ‘places’ is that they are memorable, where we locate our memories, creating a sense of locality. The big disappointment with towers is how they meet the ground – they can mark a place, but they don’t make a place.

A photo of Boris Johnson in his triumphant mayoral days shows him standing in front of a river that, on its far bank, held an array of glistening towers. This must be London, for surely, the proud gesture of London’s mayor suggested that all this was his. But was I mistaken… perhaps it was Shanghai? or possibly this was a vision of “Singapore on Thames”?

The thing is, we can’t tell which city Boris seemed to be proudly claiming. Most modern skylines look the same. We may remember Manhattan, partly because it was the first such skyline and offered a vision of a new world to immigrants with the promise that it would soon be ‘theirs’. It meant something.

For the rest of us, living in what we have learned to call one of the ‘world cities’, having the tallest, skinniest or fattest tower means very little, for they all look much the same. They are markers of investment strategies. As such, although designed by architects, they barely qualify as architecture.

David Porter is a Highgate Society member and architect.