Harris, Andrew;
Wolseley, Tom;
(2023)
Vertical Horizons: dealing with luxury urban skies.
Urban Studies
10.1177/00420980231206972.
(In press).
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Abstract
There has been a conspicuous growth in the height and extent of luxury urban development in the 21st century. This has been accompanied by important critical analyses exploring how this upward construction has created new vertical social divides and landscapes of power. This article argues, however, that there are spatial and methodological limitations to the way luxury urban skies have tended to be framed and pursued. Through a focus on the decisions taken in producing the 2017 meditative film Vertical Horizons by Tom Wolseley, the paper offers an expanded agenda for engagements with elite vertical development. This film juxtaposes views of London and Western Europe’s tallest skyscraper, the Shard, from different vantage points, with contrasting narratives about the building. Vertical Horizons seeks to use its focus on the Shard to open up more imaginative experiments with high-rise landscapes, and better recognition of the potential complicities in responses to the gleaming façades of contemporary urbanisation. The paper posits that more multi-sited, creative and reflective approaches, such as those pursued in Vertical Horizons, are required in efforts at levelling with the social and symbolic power of urban vertical luxification.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Vertical Horizons: dealing with luxury urban skies |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1177/00420980231206972 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980231206972 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
| Keywords: | London, luxury urbanism, skyscrapers, the Shard, vertical |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Geography |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10177341 |
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