coming. Fewer migrate from EU member
states, and more migrate from outside the EU,
primarily South Asia, according to a Centre for
London analysis.
FOR A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW of the city’s changing
skyline, I went to the top of the 52-story Cheese-
grater—Londoners are fond of of nicknaming
their skyscrapers—in the heart of the original
financial district, also known as the City of
London, with Peter Murray, an architect who
heads New London Architecture, a design
forum. We peer out at the pickle-shaped Gher-
kin (41 stories), the Walkie-Talkie (36 stories),
and the Shard (95 stories), the dramatic sentinel
that’s the U.K.’s tallest high-rise.
The Cheesegrater, formally named the Leaden-
hall Building, won its nickname for its angular,
wedge-shaped top floors, a design feature that
complies with London’s “protected view” reg-
ulations prohibiting obstructions of sight lines
to historic landmarks. In this case the protected
view allows pedestrians strolling along Fleet
Street to see St. Paul’s Cathedral and its 365-foot
dome, which towered over London for more
than 200 years. When cities began building sky-
scrapers in the 1880s, London never swooned.
Londoners don’t even call them that—the pre-
ferred term is “tall buildings,” meaning buildings
of at least 20 stories. The Gherkin changed Lon-
doners’ minds. It went up over community objec-
tions, replacing a historic building that had beenLONDON RISING 133