London's mile-high vertical village

March 18, 2008 One of the key challenges in urban architecture over the next 50 years will be figuring out how to squeeze vast numbers of additional people into urban areas that are already extremely crowded. London, for example, will somehow have to deal with a projected 100,000 extra inhabitants every year until 2016. The current plan of building new "commuter towns" on the city's outskirts causes a raft of problems - but architecture think tanks are working on ambitious solutions that go vertical instead of horizontal in search of space. Could 100,000 people be comfortably housed in a single structure? Could one building realistically be a whole new town, with schools, parks, public squares and hospitals?

« Back to London's mile-high vertical village