The Ever Changing City Skyline - Wren’s Cathedral to Rees’s Towers

For twenty-eight years Peter Rees was the City of London’s chief planning officer, and since 2014 has been Professor of Places and City Planning at University College London. Charismatic, articulate and passionate about planning, he has done more to shape the City’s current appearance than any other single individual, and this is an exceptional opportunity to hear his story and to understand how and why London looks as it does.

Starting at St Paul’s, we see some of the planning challenges posed by the ‘reframing’ of the Cathedral over the last decades. Paternoster Square was redeveloped following a tortuous process of consultation, royal intervention and redesign. After a visit to the roof-top space at Jean Nouvel’s 1 New Change, there is a surreptitious stroll through The Royal Exchange, the City’s centre of gossip, and an exploration of the hidden alleyways between Cornhill and Lombard Street. Here banking was born, and City pubs still fulfil a vital business role.

From the mid-1980s, and boosted by the ‘Big Bang’, the Square Mile became larger, swallowing parts of neighbouring boroughs. Broadgate is a fine example of a late 20th-century business quarter with ground-scraper buildings accommodating large dealing floors for international banks and fine publicly-accessible spaces providing the social opportunities which are conducive to business activity. Only 25 years later, the development is being refurbished and some buildings replaced.

Having grown outwards in the 80s and 90s, the City is now growing upwards, with a cluster of office towers sited to maximise their proximity to an abundance of public transport while minimising their impact upon the London skyline. A Gherkin sits alongside a Cheese-Grater, and the Walkie-Talkie provides a high-level opportunity to contemplate the ever-changing City below.