Trophy architects and the ‘dark matter' of London’s planning system

Paul Cheshire and Gerard Dericks

CentrePiece - The magazine for economic performance from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: A quarter of London's skyscrapers are designed by architects who have already won a lifetime achievement award and whose work thus has the imprimatur of 'iconic design'; this compares with just 3% in Chicago. According to research by Paul Cheshire and Gerard Dericks, employing such 'trophy architects' can get a London developer a valuable extra 19 floors on a representative site. Their study shows how in the highly uncertain world created by the UK planning system's decision-making method, it is worth spending a fortune to 'game' the system and get more space when you are successful. They explain the costs to society of these incentives to 'game' the system.

Keywords: Land use regulation; regulatory costs; rent-seeking; office markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H3 J6 Q15 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-10
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepcnp:432

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