Comment: credit crunch will dictate skyline

Suddenly everything has changed. Two months ago, prospective developers were being told to make every proposal bigger and higher. London seemed on its way to becoming a city of towers, a Thames-side Dubai or Shanghai.

Now we have a Mayor who is clearly sceptical about towers outside the City of London or Canary Wharf. He has brought in Sir Simon Milton, from the anti-tower Westminster council, to advise him.

The Mayor's newly enhanced planning powers, which Ken Livingstone would certainly have used to encourage building tall, will now be used to the opposite effect.

Most vulnerable to the Johnson axe are towers in suburban locations with little tradition of building high.

The Mayor, elected as the voice of the suburbs, can be expected to look hard at plans in Ealing — although these were already being scaled down — as well as those in Wandsworth and Battersea.

The towers proposed for Blackfriars Road also look endangered, especially the Beetham Tower, which is about to undergo a public inquiry. The design has enraged Westminster for the effect it would have on views from its royal parks.

Croydon, however, already boasts a mini-Manhattan skyline and will be a more fertile place for building tall. Stratford, a less delicate flower than some suburbs and in greater need of regeneration, might also welcome towers more easily.

But there is also a force more powerful than mayors in changing the skyline: the economy. The credit crunch seriously reduces the financial attraction of tower-building.

Proposals for towers will fall, making much of the recent debate about the skyline look like so much shadow-boxing.

SEVEN APPROVED BUT FUTURE UNCERTAIN

Shard of Glass, London Bridge Height: 1,016ft and 72 storeys
Architect: Renzo Piano
Status: Work under way.