Broadgate Tower

What’s this? A recently beleaguered property industry in bullish mood? Are we, against the odds, at the beginning of a new property boom in London? The straight answer is no. While there are cranes over the City, and a rash of proposals for tall buildings from Vauxhall to Canary Wharf, from Blackfriars to Croydon, these are still difficult times.

It might seem curious that, with a traumatised economy, the property industry would not take time to re-evaluate the schemes it had proposed in the fat times. Perhaps the temples to commerce that skyscrapers represent might feel a little hubristic at this point in the economic cycle. But not a bit of it. That kind of thinking takes too long and renegotiating planning permission is too arduous. It’s quicker to dust off old plans than to make new ones. London will get a clutch of tall buildings that were designed for a boom, and delivered after a chastening recession. There are some on site already: the 230m Heron Tower by the London office of American architect Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) will finish early next year, and the 310m Shard by star architect Renzo Piano, above London Bridge station, will also be finished in time for the 2012 Olympics.