David Craggs
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Contact details
Email: david.craggs@kcl.ac.uk
Research
Re-Imaging London: global city planning and skyscraper development
My research investigates the emergence of a new and distinct approach to planning and designing high-rise buildings in London. The main focus is on exploring an evolving political strategy that is characteristic of what may be termed ‘global city planning’ – where architecture, planning and urban governance have coalesced around an understanding that maintaining London’s status as a leading global city must be the pre-eminent logic determining all future development.
In terms of planning policy, this has been interpreted as maximising ‘world-class’, innovative, technologically advanced and architecturally distinctive city spaces in which to live and work; this is underlined by attempts to codify renewed imperatives around urban sustainability and design quality. Such interpretation has contributed to a liberalisation of attitudes toward high-rise development in the city.
Encouraged by the Greater London Authority under the leadership of Ken Livingstone, several prominent London boroughs have approved a series of proposals for commercial, residential and mixed use skyscrapers, many of which are now in the early stages of construction. This has, however, also sparked widespread debate about the progressive encroachment of commercial function upon the historic skyline of London; the sheer size and scale of these proposals has brought into sharp focus the contested nature of contemporary urban redevelopment in a city with a rich and diverse cultural heritage.
Indeed, many of these proposals have been made subject to Public Inquiries which have so far found universally in the developer’s favour. I will examine the role of the Public Inquiry as a legal mechanism in the contest to secure planning approval and question how far the inquiries have been utilised by developers, their architects and the borough councils to mediate their ambitions and re-present the perceived benefits of skyscraper development as legitimately rational decisions.
The research will incorporate a series of case studies of these buildings during their various stages of construction, the aim of each study will be to examine the processes of planning, design and ‘mediation’ that come together to shape these buildings and, importantly, attempt to build a public consensus and imaginative life for the architecture using popular and figurative discourses.
I hope to develop a critical theoretical approach to understanding this new planning agenda as an aspirational response to global scale shifts in urban cultural imagination, bridging established approaches to critical geography, architectural theory and political economy.
My research investigates the emergence of a new and distinct approach to planning and designing high-rise buildings in London. The main focus is on exploring an evolving political strategy that is characteristic of what may be termed ‘global city planning’ – where architecture, planning and urban governance have coalesced around an understanding that maintaining London’s status as a leading global city must be the pre-eminent logic determining all future development.
In terms of planning policy, this has been interpreted as maximising ‘world-class’, innovative, technologically advanced and architecturally distinctive city spaces in which to live and work; this is underlined by attempts to codify renewed imperatives around urban sustainability and design quality. Such interpretation has contributed to a liberalisation of attitudes toward high-rise development in the city.
Encouraged by the Greater London Authority under the leadership of Ken Livingstone, several prominent London boroughs have approved a series of proposals for commercial, residential and mixed use skyscrapers, many of which are now in the early stages of construction. This has, however, also sparked widespread debate about the progressive encroachment of commercial function upon the historic skyline of London; the sheer size and scale of these proposals has brought into sharp focus the contested nature of contemporary urban redevelopment in a city with a rich and diverse cultural heritage.
Indeed, many of these proposals have been made subject to Public Inquiries which have so far found universally in the developer’s favour. I will examine the role of the Public Inquiry as a legal mechanism in the contest to secure planning approval and question how far the inquiries have been utilised by developers, their architects and the borough councils to mediate their ambitions and re-present the perceived benefits of skyscraper development as legitimately rational decisions.
The research will incorporate a series of case studies of these buildings during their various stages of construction, the aim of each study will be to examine the processes of planning, design and ‘mediation’ that come together to shape these buildings and, importantly, attempt to build a public consensus and imaginative life for the architecture using popular and figurative discourses.
I hope to develop a critical theoretical approach to understanding this new planning agenda as an aspirational response to global scale shifts in urban cultural imagination, bridging established approaches to critical geography, architectural theory and political economy.
Supervisors
Funding
SSPP Studentship
Biography
My academic background is quite broad, I graduated from the University of York in 2001 with a degree in Philosophy and subsequently completed a Masters degree in ‘The Culture of Modernism’ which basically allowed me to indulge my interests in theories of artistic production and ‘high’ and ‘low’ cultures – particularly the work of the Frankfurt School, Clement Greenberg, Robert Hughes, Julian Stallabrass, even Brian Sewell. My dissertation explored the emergence of politically ambivalent forms of art under the ‘young British art’ movement and its aesthetic fascination with Britain’s tabloid culture.
I worked for a few years in Leeds, as a research assistant at a market research agency and then in the community regeneration team at Leeds City Council Neighbourhoods and Housing Office. I’d always wanted to take my academic work further, but couldn’t decide on whether to pursue artistic theory or try my hand at the social sciences. In the end I decided that the latter would be more useful, and opted to enrol on the Cities, Culture and Social Change MA at King’s College.
I completed this in 2007 with a dissertation on the political, economic and personal ambitions acting on the development of new high-rise architecture in London using Renzo Piano’s design for London Bridge Tower as a case study, this laid the foundations for my PhD research.
Prior to taking up my PhD I worked, and occasionally still do, as a business development researcher for a youth and family support agency in the Docklands.
Other interests are modern art and film, techno, real ale and newsnight.
I worked for a few years in Leeds, as a research assistant at a market research agency and then in the community regeneration team at Leeds City Council Neighbourhoods and Housing Office. I’d always wanted to take my academic work further, but couldn’t decide on whether to pursue artistic theory or try my hand at the social sciences. In the end I decided that the latter would be more useful, and opted to enrol on the Cities, Culture and Social Change MA at King’s College.
I completed this in 2007 with a dissertation on the political, economic and personal ambitions acting on the development of new high-rise architecture in London using Renzo Piano’s design for London Bridge Tower as a case study, this laid the foundations for my PhD research.
Prior to taking up my PhD I worked, and occasionally still do, as a business development researcher for a youth and family support agency in the Docklands.
Other interests are modern art and film, techno, real ale and newsnight.
