21st century high-rise: The planning, design, development and governance of residential towers in UK cities

Keywords: high-rise; UK cities; urban planning; governance; design
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 71

Abstract

‘Vertical urbanisation’ (Nethercote, 2018) is a global phenomenon that has recently accelerated in UK cities. To date, research has tended to focus on countries including Australia, Canada and the United States. This evidence suggests high-rise life increases loneliness (Barros et al., 2019), restricts opportunities for community (Appold and Yuen, 2007), limit access to green space (Kuo and Sullivan, 2001), and heightens fears about personal safety (Yeh and Yuen, 2011). However, the negative impacts of vertical urbanisation are overshadowed by the profits delivered to developers, and its characterisation by planners and city leaders as a sustainable ‘spatial fix’ to urban sprawl and housing supply.

Research has yet to be conducted on the evolution and implications of this global development typology in the UK, the need for which is brought into focus by the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, the wider building safety crisis and the social inequalities of new UK high-rises, including the advent of separate ‘poor doors’ for affordable housing residents and their exclusion from amenities. In this paper we introduce a conceptual framework for examining how contemporary high-rises are planned, designed, developed, experienced and managed. The UK equivalent of 'condo-isation' (Lippert and Steckle, 2016), we contend, has broad and complex foundations in discretionary planning, design, and common legal structures. Our paper thus develops an understanding of the ‘vertical’ urban experience and high-rise social relations as the product of spatial, aesthetic, socio-economic, psychological and legal factors, only partially reflected in concepts such as ‘vertical luxification’ (Graham, 2015).