In the battle between heritage and development, we face a ‘crisis of verticality’. But does an approach to planning based on protected views just turn the city into a museum?

Oxford is under threat. In recent months, the council has been responding to widespread concerns that the city of “dreaming spires” was about to be swamped by a rash of tall new buildings. As a result, alongside English Heritage and other agencies, the council has devised policies that create a series of protected views, triangular sections that cut across the map in order to preserve the vertical skyline of the city.

A selection of city panoramas from particular points of historic or local interest have been protected, taking in not just individual historical buildings but also the topography, the city as a landscape of natural features, variegated heights and forms, combining into a pleasing image. As the interim report for the Oxford Views study says, this harmony is constantly in jeopardy, facing “the continuing challenges of building within the city to meet the demands of a modern society.”

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If the height of a building is itself a moving target, is the policy of protected views perhaps less useful than imagined? As the example of London proves, this policy has done very little to curb development, and has, perhaps, even made the rash of new luxury housing towers that have erupted across the city more blighted. In particular it has shown that the policy of protected views is as much to do with political machinations of mayors, planners and developers as it is a vision of what the city of the future should look like. ...

The policy of protected views is clearly, more often than not, a short term political opportunity rather than a philosophy of urban planning. The truth is that a policy that appeared to find purchase in the 1980s and 1990s, driven by a fear of an empty downtown, no longer makes any sense. Instead, what the policy has done is to see the city from a distance, and, as a result, the people who actually live and work there appear very small; often invisible.

So Oxford should not believe that they will save the city of spires just by creating view cones that traverse the city. Rather, the city needs to develop a programme for growth that takes into account not just the architecture but also the people that live their everyday lives between these monuments.