From Dundee to Croydon, Birmingham to Wigan, the UK's urban centres are becoming ever-more populated with slick, contemporary council buildings. Although commissioned in much more buoyant economic times, the emergence of state-of-the-art civic offices, concurrently with the decimation of budgets to schools, hospitals and social services, can seem profligate at worst, and at best, somewhat out of step with the current Zeitgeist. Look at the vitriol which greeted New-ham LBC's £110m headquarters in east London in 2009.
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