Listing Broadgate.. unthinking bureaucracy or what?

[Marcus Brody]

why isnt it obvious to a developer whether a site should be listed or not

I'd imagine that the clue is in the title developer - in order to turn a profit, they have to develop the site in some way, and in most cases this involves demolishing whatever's there and cramming in as many houses/flats/offices as they can get away with. The vast majority would see no reason why anything should be listed, as it would just be an impediment getting in the way of their development. As a group that is unlikely to appreciate any reason why a structure should be listed, they're perhaps not in the best position to be impartial arbiters!

While I don't necessarily agree that Broadgate should be listed (I've never been there, so I don't know what it's like as a building), you could argue in the other direction and ask if you don't agree with listing, how would you stop a developer knocking down St Paul's or the Tower of London - both occupy valuable real estate, why not knock them down and stick up a few flats? Similarly, while Broadgate may not appear to have particular architectural merit at this point, because similar architecture is all around us and we're perhaps overly familiar with it, this may not be the case in 50 years, when all the other late 20th century concrete shopping centres have been removed. It's not so long ago that it was proposed to demolish St Pancras station, now acknowledged to be a gem of Victorian architecture.

I'd also disagree with the quote from Lord Wolfson in the original article, 'This decision sacrifices new development, the architecture of the future, to preserve the unremarkable architecture of the past. It is but one example of how unthinking bureaucracy is fossilising the UK economy.' There seems to be an implicit assumption that knocking down perfectly serviceable buildings is a sustainable way of operating, that old automatically equates with bad and worthless while new is shiny and good. God forbid that anything should get in the way of the developer making as much profit as he can!