Global City

A decade of high inflation and widespread industrial disputes in the 1970s shifted the political consensus from the collectivist politics of the post-war settlement to the individualistic politics of neoliberalism. Belief in the sanctity of the market has become the dominant ideology of a new, more advanced form of capitalism, subject to intensifying globalisation and financialisation and operating under the hegemonic control of international finance capital. Income inequalities have widened spectacularly, the mixed economy has been dismantled through privatisation, yet economic growth rates have declined. Global financial hegemony has enabled the City of London to reposition itself as one of the world’s three leading financial centres, alongside New York and Tokyo. Led by the City, finance dominates the British economy to an extent unparalleled in any other major advanced economy. One of the most lucrative functions of City institutions is to manage the wealth of the global super-rich, whose demands for opulent mansions, gated communities, luxury shops and fashionable restaurants has made London a plutocrats’ paradise. The economic and political transition from collectivism to neoliberalism has been accompanied by a cultural transition from modernity to postmodernity, producing a shift from Modernism to Postmodernism in architectural style. Rejecting balance and harmony, Postmodernist architects favour eccentric forms of ornament, use structural elements for symbolic not functional effect, and deploy architectural signifiers that are deliberately enigmatic. They aim to create iconic buildings of startling form, designed to achieve rapid global recognition. It is in the City that Postmodernist architecture took the strongest hold. Office towers of increasingly eccentric form appeared, most notably the High-Tech Lloyd’s Building by Richard Rogers. The relentless rise of these towers has transformed London’s landscape of power over the last twenty years. Interaction between the ascendancy of financial capital and the rise of the office tower has driven the hegemonic imperative to develop, own and occupy the tallest towers in the most striking shapes. Earliest and finest of the new towers was Norman Foster’s 41-storey Gherkin, but this is now becoming lost to view within a forest of taller and bulkier neighbours. The latest of these is 22 Bishopsgate, at 62 storeys the tallest addition to the City skyline so far, though not as tall as the 72-storey Shard across the river in Southwark. Since the 1980s, the City has faced competition from the rival community of towers that has sprung up in Canary Wharf, centred on One Canada Square, the first and still the tallest of the cluster. As the towers of Docklands multiply, the newcomers are increasingly likely to be luxury apartments rather than prestige offices. Both the hegemonic imperative and the technical capability to build high have been transferred from the commercial to the residential sector. Luxury apartment towers are now spreading rapidly across London, with a Thameside location particularly favoured by wealthy Londoners. A sequence of these towers can be seen stretching along the riverside from Tower Hamlets to Hammersmith, with a particularly prominent cluster at Nine Elms in Wandsworth.