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This is the age of greed. Although the more expensive buildings have some importance, most people do not work or live in them. The developers have chosen cheap over good and profit over structure. Because politicans can be bought the urban landscape has become a continuing process of redevelopment. Tear down this and put up that...tax-breaks and governmental services added as enticements and we go on an on as the developer knows the quality of what has been built and will return for the planned reduced value of the structures to be rebuilt again. The developers have tried to eliminate anything of quality that remains. Again, this is more fallout from the banks betrayal of everyone..no money to finish the projects that have begun. The architecture of today represents the banks having the best and tallest buildings to look down on their domains.

Architecture may be "a truthful legacy of an age", but the age itself may be one of dissimulation.
In our age, public money is spent on glass-and-steel shopping centres in dying regional towns to create a false sense of prosperity, and vainly attempt to establish an unsustainable economic model based on self-perpetuating consumerism. This is quite unlike the Georgian and Victorian architecture of those same towns, which was built in a time of real enterprise and real prosperity.
Meanwhile, fallacious reasoning about infinitely expanding traffic and environmental concerns are used as an excuse not to spend the same public money on a viable transport infrastructure, which might itself become an architecural legacy, and which might also bring real prosperity to those regions.
I can see little in today's development that will even survive, let alone be cherished. It seems unlikely that the vast amount of retail space created over the last few years will ever again be required, while the buy-to-let flats that have sprung up in city centres like Leeds shown in David Sillito's film are largely unmarketable and of such poor quality that they could not even be used for social housing.
Great public works of architecture are all very well when an age knows and is able to represent itself, but the comical failure of recent efforts like the Millenium Dome seem to indicate that Musil's "The Man Without Qualities" is more true today than when it was written.
As for the architectural legacy of our age, perhaps an empty space like the ones shown in the film would be appropriate. It would at least be honest.

Towards an Architecture of Demolition (via Nietzsche) and the nothingness of existentialism - the absence of being. (see J-P Sartre) We have a demolished building near by that is now a lake. The lake was until recently an ice rink and nature is rapidly reclaiming it. But the tragedy is that the fence is still in place. The building it replaced was architecturally actually rather pleasant, but the lake it must be said is in fact far more interesting. Earlier in 1846 there was an undistinguished country house on part of the site and before that a farm beside one the ancient roads into London for a couple of thousand years, but the lake is an improvement on dereliction.

The desertification of our built environment is an opportunity and we must embrace it. Enjoy the light for only too soon we will be plunged into a concrete hell once again. Let us all hope that the lake will be remembered - it is quite probably exceeding hostile as an environment as the water lies on a base ground-up concrete. Perhaps all derelict land should be turned into lakes?

Town and City councils should be grabbing that land, serving compulsory purchase orders, serving 'Build or Forfeit' orders on the landholders.
The current value is nil.
What was once common land (the land common to us all) was enclosed and annexed by force, now is the time for the community to take it back at almost zero cost.
This is a once in intergenerational opportunity to take back what was once forcefully taken from us, we should not let it lapse.

I don't live in bradford and even if they have got uber developed wonder architecture that is a marvel to behold it would do nothing for me they would be so proud they would not welcome any vistor to enjoy their achievement. You want to have a wonderland full of things to enjoy ok I can understand that but the knives are always out. I get the theory you build teams to achieve your goal it's meant to produce a kind of work that is pleasing to the investor and fits into the environment and shows what great people we are but then we are dead and someone else inherits it and we don't like that. So a great work is worth nothing if nobody is allowed to enjoy and or participate in it.

And we are also worried that someone will blow it up since world war 1 and world war 2 demolished alot of our lovely arcitecture. And we have got into the habit of dropping big bombs all over the place and killing everyone.

In the summer of 2007 I was working on eight multimillion pound developments in the Northwest (hotel, retail and flats)

After the Northern Rock went down the following happened:
Three went to completion because they were well underway.
Two were stopped after foundation stage, and are still at that point.
Three were stopped after demolition of existing buildings and are still vacant sites.

Most of the developers have gone bust, and all schemes were unable to get funding to finish them.

During the boom property increased dramatically in value.
In the past for example buy to let flats and commercial property were valued as follows:
Gross annual rent x Years Purchase multiplier = capital value.

This method of valuing property was basically thrown out of the window during the boom. Buy a flat for £100,000, next year it’s worth £115,000; you didn’t need to rent it out to get a return on your investment.

The boom ended in September 2007 and we have now drifted back to the traditional method of valuing property.

For example a flat in the Northwest of England being worth £125,000 in 2006 has now fallen to around £75,000, and even that’s starting to look optimistic.

Problem is you can’t actually build them for £75,000, so the developments that were based on these inflated values, have no hope of ever going ahead.

As regards the architectural legacy, it will be blocks of flats that become ghettos.
And
As long as we have cars, and local councils with merciless parking charges and fines, out of town shopping centres will flourish.

Architecture can never deliver what it aspires to, when financial returns take precedent.

Why pretend that we really need more of these large scale retail and office developments in town centres? There is a growing trend towards internet shopping, and large numbers of office workers are being shed.

Planning directives for some of these sites should be switched to housing, with penalties for non-development to avoid land owners holding the site indefinitely as a land bank. We need housing right now and these sites have good access to public transport and potential employment - far better than eating up green belt land, and it would bring life back to town centres. The moribund building sector would benefit. If land owners resist enforced developemnt, how about rezoning part of their site for travellers, suitably screened by some new urban woodlands?

We could have more devolution of the civil service away from London - not as large developments: modern communications should enable departments to be split between several towns without significant adverse effect on their function and with the benefit of making government less vulnerable to terrorist attack in central London.

7. At 2:12pm on 13 Feb 2010, Dempster wrote:
As regards the architectural legacy, it will be blocks of flats that become ghettos.
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I agree entirely. I see the awful glass boxes built along the Thames from Putney to Wandsworth through Battersea and all the way to Greenwich and can only think of dull architects who see themselves as clever by giving something wonderful to the world and awards for innovation to each other.
They are in fact the slums of the not too distant future as the running costs overtake what can be sustained and living in glass houses will become so noughties.

Every generation needs an Architecture.

We have the architecture of destruction, of demolition, of the void everything is colourless and featureless.

Architecture mirrors society!

I imagine half the Architects are up early buying all the glass while the other half are up early buying all the concrete. Or possibly Fenestration Theory ran simultaneously with Opaque Structures classes, I don't know.

It's so dumb and soulless. They've created spaces you could only want to get in and out of in a hurry. Who'd want to hang around them - nevermind live amongst them? That's how I see these buildings and their surroundings - inhuman and dehumanising.

11. At 1:32pm on 15 Feb 2010, ian-russell wrote:
...They've created spaces you could only want to get in and out of in a hurry.
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This may be hitting the nail on the head. They create spaces. Just looking at this as a phrase tells us that they are not creating homes, pleasant working environments or social interaction. It is just space at a speculative price per square metre to satisfy the landowner, not the occupier.

Round large parts of London it seemed any patch of land big enough to stand and take a leak was snapped up by developers who then built "luxury apartments" - typically 2 bed / 2 bath shoeboxes priced at £250,000 or more. They had desirable features like balconies, even if the only view from the balcony was the main road or the local kebab shop. The soundproofing often left a lot to be desired, but still people queued up to buy overpriced shoeboxes.

So although now we see areas boarded up and nothing happening, in so many ways it's a good thing that developers aren't throwing bricks together in a rush to make a vast profit. Perhaps over time we'll start building houses that people actually want to live in rather than ever-smaller shoeboxes that serve no purpose except to be shuffled from one owner to another as each uses it as merely a leveraged investment.

In this day & age, with the "me" generation, low impulse control, credit buying, vicarious living, computer technology - got to have more, more, more and yet MORE - How can society gain a sense of social cohesion (vs. everyone for himself and what do I get out of it)?
Without social conhesion, how do you design the buildings and their surroundings to reflect the values of the social cohesion.
In fact your colleague's film about dereliction in city centres may be a perfect film about modern day architecture, reflecting the age of greed, capitalism, reality TV, and social networks where everybody is your "good buddy" while you have no one that you really know. For what do you need a viable city centre?

British cities are just awful - the architecture is drab, boring, uninspiring and lacks aesthetic appeal. The city town planning is disastrous everywhere you look - never want to live there!