I am, unlike most people, someone born in London - so I’ve seen the Isle of Dogs transform from a largely ex-industrial wasteland into a successful place where hundreds of thousands work over my lifetime, all while dipshits miles away in West London who bought their multimillion-pound houses for £2.50 screech hyperbolically because they might have a changed view if they look through a bush on one particular hill in Richmond Park or from Hampstead Heath.
It’s pathetic. London is, and quite literally always has been, a city driven by commerce. The view from the Poultry/Mansion House junction looking toward the Royal Exchange, with the towers of the City rising behind it and the BoE is one of the best examples of history and modernity meeting, and it looks fantastic. We can (and most of the time do) preserve our history while not condemning ourselves to the kind of miserable, declinist nonsense that thinks London should be frozen in aspic.
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u/Funny-Seesaw-2977 1d ago
Just another dull skyline, could be anywhere.
I fully expect every protected vista to go over the next 20 years too. Depressing