High-Rise Urbanism in Contemporary Europe

Abstract

This issue of Built Environment seeks to contribute to emerging debates around vertical urbanism by emphasizing the recent sharp upward trajectories of European cities. The skylines of London, Paris, Madrid, Milan, or even Saragossa and Malmo have been transformed dramatically by new tall buildings. This resurgence of skyscrapers that began in the early 2000s is a major phenomenon, both intense and widespread. This post-2000 boom is not necessarily exemplified in super-tall futuristic structures such as the ones that have been erected in Dubai or Beijing during this period, but in supposedly compact energy-efficient urban blocks according to new high-rise urbanism principles. Woven into the existing city fabric, these projects are often framed from the ground up, as initiatives to reinvigorate local deprived or de-industrialized neighbourhoods and to create urban amenities around transport nodes, embodying new sets of discourses and practices among built environment professionals and planning authorities.Through a combination of particular case-studies across Europe with wider analyses of national and international trends, this special issue investigates the relationship in European cities between high-rise built fabric and planning regimes, financial flows, cultural representations, technical innovations, and forms of modernist heritage. Developing cross-disciplinary perspectives and engagement with both academic and practitioner insights, the issue provides a sustained assessment of high-rise Europe in the context of a wider world of vertical urbanisms.