A Tale of Two Spheres
How one country embraces innovation and investment, while another actively pushes it away.
Sadiq Khan once said the threat of terrorism was “part and parcel of living in a great global city”. It was a controversial statement, but one that perhaps surprisingly I have a great deal of sympathy with. It was clumsy language, but we know what he was getting at. Great global densely populated places like London, New York, or Las Vegas will always be under greater threat than the Shetland Islands. Simply because they are great global places.1
It is curious therefore, that the very same Sadiq Khan does not think bright lights are “part and parcel of living in a great global city”. The Mayor has just vetoed $2 billion in foreign direct investment, on the grounds of “light pollution”.
What could have been the first sphere.
The MSG (Madison Square Garden) Sphere London was set to be a world renowned music venue. A huge spherical stadium with dazzling and enormous spherical screens both inside and out. The venue would provide gobsmacking immersive visuals for concerts and films inside the 21,500 seat arena as well as on its exterior.
The Sphere was to not only have the largest and highest resolution LED screen anywhere in the world, but also the world’s largest ‘beamforming’ audio system. The advanced technology was to pinpoint where sound is directed, targeting incredibly precise areas of the auditorium. The magic of this system would have been that it could be programmed in order that people sitting in one section of the audience could hear one thing, while people sitting in another could hear something else. Think of a multilingual movie experience, but with no need for headphones.
It’s hard to overstate the revolutionary technology packed into this proposed sphere. It would have been a globally renowned icon for London, perhaps even more culturally significant than the London Eye or O2 Arena. Except, unlike the then Millennium Dome, the London Sphere would take zero government subsidies. Quite the opposite, it would provide huge revenues to the exchequer.2
Despite this, the planners at City Hall have this week rejected the project.
The Stratford site is of course situated in a sparkling new skyscraper-dominated district. In the shadow of the brightly lit 115 metre tall Orbit tower. In the shadow of the Olympic Stadium. It sits between two railway tracks. It is served by no fewer than ten transport stations, from underground to overground, Elizabeth Line to national rail, and of course two 24 hour a day bus station. The Mayor’s statement seems to forget all of this, reading as if this he is protecting a quiet quaint rural hamlet.
City Hall says that “33 homes in the New Garden Quarter residential development; 28 homes in the Legacy Tower/Stratford Central; and 177 student rooms in the Unite student accommodation building” would be affected by the development.
And so, for the sake of fitting blackout blinds in just 61 posh flats and 177 student rooms, we have foregone one of the single largest investments in the capital in recent memory. The Mayor had the opportunity to accept innovation, high skilled jobs, and economic growth and he turned it all away.
The Other Sphere
Let’s turn our eyes across an ocean. At the same time the London Sphere was pitched, in 2018, an identical venue in Las Vegas was proposed. Instead of a half decade of indecision, this sphere was treated differently. This sphere was approved by planners, delayed by Covid, constructed, and opened to the world in the time it has taken the Mayor of London to make a decision.
Yes far from the UK’s rejection of this investment and this innovative stadium, the United States of America accepted it. All of that technology the London Sphere could have boasted is instead attracting the eyes of the world to Nevada. Even Beyoncé is now in talks for a residency there. And all because some American planners said yes, a private company spent $2 billion on American engineers, American construction workers, American tech boffins, and American venue managers. And all of that feeds into tax receipts too.
Consequently tourists have flocked, tech geeks have marvelled, and commentators have found an something to refute that all too common refrain that we simply don’t make anything impressive any more. The Vegas Sphere shows a city and a country that is charging into the future. And it is indicative of something much wider.
These two spheres represent two different visions of the world. One that spends half a decade trapped in bureaucratic indecision before being snuffed out by a backwards politician. The other that leans in to change and growth, that says yes to billions of dollars of investment. That finds reasons to say yes, not reasons to say no.
How much poorer would New York be today had it decided a hundred years ago that there were quite enough buildings, quite enough height, and quite enough light?
Is it any wonder that Q3 2023 showed an annualised rate of growth in the States of 4.3%, while the UK experienced zero growth in the same quarter?
As the Mayor’s statement goes “London is open to investment from around the world and Sadiq wants to see more world-class, ambitious, innovative entertainment venues in our city. But…”
London is open to investment. But.
What a telling statement. The rallying cry of the nimby. The weasel words of the anti-growth coalition.
The beauty of London in the past has always been that it does both old and new. Ancient pubs next to gleaming skyscrapers. A victorian memorial statue of Eros lit up in the lights of dazzling curved advertising screens. By the 1980s, London decided it did not want to be a museum. It decided to do both old and new.
That is what sets it apart from European cities. That is what has been in large part the secret to London’s late 20th century renaissance and enduring global success. And that is what is at risk of being slowly extinguished by politicians who would rather turn London off at night.
Today, as in the last forty years, the British capital should not try to block growth, light, or height. It’s not Rome. It’s London.
This should not be a matter of contention, beyond a handful of fancy flats that now might need to install blackout blinds. Frankly is it that shocking that choosing to live right next to busy transport hubs, near stadiums and tourist attractions, amidst a cluster of dazzling skyscrapers… might come with a tad of light pollution?
Would we forbid the London Eye today because there are now some flats going up behind it? Would we forbid the construction of Canary Wharf because it changed the character of the area?
At 90 metres tall the sphere would come in 21 metres shorter than St Paul’s and 45 metres shorter than the London Eye. It should not be a surprise that in the centre of a thriving global city, there are illuminated attractions.
The nimbyism on display and being so pusillanimously indulged here is as infuriating as the nimbyism of those residents of central Soho who expect their streets to be silent and pubs closed by 10pm. I would gently suggest that if someone were to want a slower, quieter, and unilluminated, life they should perhaps choose to live literally anywhere other than the centre of a bustling megacity.
One last hope.
The Mayor of London, however, is not all powerful here. This planning decision doesn’t have to be left to an anti-growth politician, or a left wing political party. Ultimately there is someone who can overrule him. Michael Gove.
Here, the Tories have nothing to lose and everything to gain. This part of East London won’t vote Tory in a million years. The nimbys are Labour’s problem in this instance, no the government’s. And I don’t need to emphasise how in need of investment the UK is. The numbers to that for me. Zero growth last quarter. This is a decision that should be signed sealed and delivered on that fact alone.
But there’s something deeper here too. A sense of progress, and of of pioneers. Much of the world is transfixed by the Vegas Sphere. People are talking about it, writing about it, travelling to it. It is a profound shame that London missed the chance to get there first, to be the talking point and maintain a sense that it is a city on the frontier of human progress. But what a bigger shame it would be if the next major city that Madison Square Garden decides to approach to plough with investment for its second sphere wasn’t British at all. What a sorry sign that would be, that London was no longer a place for progress or for spectacle.
Michael Gove, for the sake of not just British jobs or British growth, but British pride too - overrule Sadiq Khan. Let’s allow the sphere.
I have nothing against the Shetland Islands, it’s just that with just 19.76 crimes per 1,000 people reported during 2020-2021, the archipelago was statistically the area with the lowest crime in the UK. That’s all.
I find this fact particularly frustrating as I have learned that the O2 arena is one of the major players behind the scenes that has been lobbying for the cancellation of the sphere. It simply doesn’t want the competition. And that’s bad for all consumers.