If you want to know the difference between London and Dubai, you could do worse than compare two towers that have come out of the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM). One, the still-rising Burj Dubai, pursues the single goal of being the tallest building in the world, without regard for such petty concerns as net-to-gross ratios or, one suspects, cost. The Burj Dubai grows untrammelled from a vast site in single ownership - a company which happens to be owned by the emirate's ruling family. The tower develops consistently and unhindered from its flower-shaped plan to its record-breaking pinnacle. The other, Broadgate Tower in central London, is a work of negotiation and manoeuvre; the third iteration of possible schemes on this site in a decade of project development. It occupies a plot shaped by historic vagaries of land ownership, scooped out underneath by the railway tracks heading into Liverpool Street Station.
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