Until recently, Manhattan’s skyscrapers had been about the success of the city as a place of business. From the Woolworth to the World Trade Center, the skyline’s standout monuments were ciphers for the thrust of capitalism. The city’s first post-9/11 masterpiece, however, Frank Gehry’s 8 Spruce Street, indicated a change. The WTC had its business inscribed in its name; Gehry’s tower was a condo building. It also housed, in its base, a public school and facilities for a hospital.

Could this be the future of the city? High-end housing subsidising public amenity in a complex, shimmering form? No. Not really. As it turned out, the future would be pure real estate. Gehry’s public facilities were the exception. The future was the privatisation of the sky and a transfer from corporate power to individual wealth, the visual manifestation of the 0.1 per cent. It was a catwalk of anorexic skinnyscrapers by the equivalents of haute-couture designers — the built manifestations of Tom Wolfe’s “social X-rays”. The fashion metaphor works because architects are becoming brands: global names with which to sell real estate.

Superficially, it seems a good thing.