The Shard: view for a few

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/31/the-shard-view-for-a-few

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Today's landmark buildings are no longer merely opened: they are launched, inaugurated, paraded before journalists. Before the occupants even move in, a flashy office or block of million-pound flats will have launched a fistful of press releases.

So it is with the Shard. In the past few months, London's latest skyscraper has been launched with a laser show along the Thames and a banquet for Prince Andrew and the Qatari prime minister; has celebrated its completion and been the site of a royal abseiling competition. On Friday the tallest tower in Europe is finally open to the public. Much of the commentary that will inevitably follow will focus on the jutting Renzo Piano architecture and its views out to the North Sea. But there is another way of seeing the Shard: as a metaphor of how Britain today is becoming ever more unequal and dangerously lopsided.

Set in one of the most deprived parts of London, the Shard is pretty much off-limits to its neighbours, who will not be able to afford a bed in the five-star hotel, let alone one of the £30-£50m flats. They might get up to its viewing gallery but, at £25 for an adult and £19 for a child, they might well find other uses for the cash.

Such extreme exclusivity is no accident. Developer Irvine Sellar proudly talks of his "virtual town". The pricey office space is intended for hedge funders and management consultants. Given that more than one in three children in the local borough of Southwark receive free school meals, it is unlikely that too many of their parents will be employed inside. Finance now occupies an unprecedented amount of physical space in London: from the Square Mile to Canary Wharf and Mayfair and now the South Bank. But while finance is good at renting out pricey office blocks, it's terrible at creating jobs. Even during the boom, the entire industry generated almost no net new jobs.

As late as the 80s, commercial buildings were largely owned by the businesses that occupied them. Now they are increasingly in the hands of absentee investors. A 2011 Cambridge study found that 52% of City offices were owned by foreign landlords, up from 8% in 1980. Any Treasury official will tell you that there is a good case for foreign investment, in roads or factories. But this foreign money is flooding into safe London property – and staying there. At least, until a crash comes. In the end, the Shard underlines what a one-horse town London is becoming, in the thrall of finance and a home to the world's hot money. During good times, this model may make London a wealthy city; it does nothing for the prosperity of most Londoners.