I don't know about the other Uglies, but The Shard - financed by Mohammedan money - strikes me as being nothing more or less than a minaret, and a very ugly one at that.

Let us, however, reflect that what goes up, can come down.

And that these modern buildings, many of them, are less inherently durable than buildings like St Paul's, or lovely Westminster Abbey which has patiently lasted for about a thousand years by now.

There is in Brisbane, Australia, a perfect little French cathedral (its architect modelled it consciously upon French Gothic cathedrals) perched on a high point in the city - St John's (for St John the Divine).  It is currently overshadowed by looming office blocks and apartment blocks - neither ugly nor beautiful, just dull.  But St John's, an oasis of beauty and calm, built with love and patient attention to detail over a period of about a hundred years, stone by stone by stone, from beautiful local stone,  strikes me as being - all other things being equal, and if the line can be held against the Jihad - much more likely to be still there in a hundred years, or five hundred years, or even - like Westminster - a thousand years - than the concrete-and-glass blocks that surround it.  In a hundred years, or two hundred, it is likely that they will have rotted or melted away.  And best of all, my latest edition of the Mother's Union newsletter (Australian branch) informed me that at the present time, the Archbishop has discovered that every Sunday St John's Cathedral is full of worshipping families - young couples, seemingly, many of them with children.  Perhaps some of them have even been beckoned down out of their cramped apartments not far away, by the sound of the bells...

Its good to see someone attempting to build a Conservative approach to architecture and town planning.  The field has been one-sided for too long.

The writer remarks that the alternative view is suppressed.  My parner joined the Skyscraper City forum and was banned for spamming after one post for trying to start a debate about traditional and contemporary architecture.

Roger Scruton has written about this but he is too abstract for a Conservative and it needs the practical reasoning associated with traditional Conservatism as used by the writer because our towns and cities are practical places.

Congratulations to Rebecca for showing the open-mindeness and tolerance for debatye so lacking in the "free-thinking" journals such as the one referred to by the writer.

I concur. We have waited for someone to begin developing a Conservatism for the contemporary age for a long time.  The Conservative Journals in the UK have been to timid to take on the dominant forces of Globalism and its defender political correctness.  Lets hope they will develop some courage and fight for our traditions and communities.

I also concur in the praise of Rebecca for showing UK Conservatives not be frightened to print bold or new views on matters of public interest.

I am heartened by these comments.  It is difficult to get a new view across even in so-called Conservative journals as mentioned above.

  I wrote to the Liverpool Echo recently but have not heard anything from them. That was about the proposed Shangai Tower which would further ruin the once world-famous Liverpool Waterfront.

Why copy a tower from Shangai?  Are the so lacking in imagination that they have to copy other buildings? It would be so much easier to develop from each countries own traditions and not ruin each places ambience.

Christina, in the churches I visit around England, I am constantly told that the traditional sevices using the Book of Common Prayer are better attended than the "modern" services.  Yet, the "modern services " are held at times when it is easier to attend.  This is ideology over practice.  Peter Hitchins" in The Abolition of Britain" is good on how progressives got the new services adopted despite them not being very popular.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/feb/07/liverpool-redevelopment-skyscraper-regeneration

 I don't think these international skyscrapers are very practical. For instance, how often do the elevators in New York or Chicago sjyscrapers jam?

http://rt.com/news/moscow-tower-catches-fire-068/