New tower of glass opposit the golden cross

I'm very excited about these towers happening but they are babies on the international stage.

They'll send a signal that Cardiff is growing sure, but I don't see anything other than media coverage
locally where they think a 15 floor building is a skyscraper and maybe industry magazines. How many towers above 30 floors
do other regional cities in the UK have?

Still, as a skysxraper geek I'm very excited.

3 cities outside London have a 30 storey skyscraper. Manchester, Leeds & Birmingham

Liverpool has a 40 storey tower and Sheffield has a 31 storey tower.

http://whatculture.com/offbeat/10-talle ... ent-london

Anyway we shouldn't complain, we have a great skyline, this was taken while Admiral HQ was under construction, so imagine how amazing a pic taken from a similar viewpoint will be in 3 years time?

Anyway we shouldn't complain, we have a great skyline, this was taken while Admiral HQ was under construction, so imagine how amazing a pic taken from a similar viewpoint will be in 3 years time?

Yes we should complain and no we don't have a great skyline! Our skyline (and our city centre) is pityful when compared with the capital cities of other small nations/countries. Why? Lack of business.

Our CBD is astonishly small for a capital city! It's not even as if we have a Glasgow to our Edinburgh. We have only one major copmany (FTS100) with its HQ in Wales. We do not even have a single major bank based in Wales as pretty much all of banks were bought out long ago and ceased trading under their original names. Go to a city like Glasgow and you see these stunning old Victoria and Early-Edwardian office buildings (up to 8 storeys high) that were head quarters for banks, financial and insurance companies. These are still occupied by businesses. Our equivalents (much smaller versions in old Bute Town) lay empty and rotting. We have major city-centre plots like Callaghan Sq that has been empty for about 20 years.

I read an article the other day, which was taking about Cardiff's compactness and disconnect across it's region.
http://www.iwa.wales/click/2017/02/living-on-the-edge/
It mentioned that people still refer to it as "town". That's the reality, it is little more than a town.

After 20 years of devolution, we're finally seeing efforts to transform Cardiff into a proper city with major developments, a metro and incentives to attract white-collar business. But we've got an awful long way to go! I'm hoping that the current developments (proposed and under construction) are only just the beginning.

Cardiff is the 12th biggest city in the UK and I don't think anyone sees it as a town, that may be be your perception but I don't think it's widely held.

The city centre is compact but that's seen as a plus for most visitors, the bay adds a bit of spread as well.

I'd say it's much bigger than the 12th. People forget that we essentially have suburbs that are not counted as Cardiff. Caerphilly, Penarth, most of the Vale. Even parts of Newport like Marshfield should really be considered as Cardiff. This is why population count is such a poor metric for city size, and how Leeds can be considered the second biggest city in the UK when it clearly isn't. If you stretched Cardiff's boundaries to its actual suburban area then it would be closer to 500,000.

If we're only talking of city centres, think about how long it would take you to walk from the edge of the civic centre to the bay. Cardiff only feels compact because nobody ever goes beyond the shopping districts, so they never really get a sense of the real size. There's no way small cities like Leicester and Coventry should be considered bigger than Cardiff. If it keeps going the way it is, Cardiff could soon be 6th or 5th. We're already catching up to Bristol. We may have to officially annex Caerphilly, Penarth and the like before long.

I'd say it's much bigger than the 12th. People forget that we essentially have suburbs that are not counted as Cardiff. Caerphilly, Penarth, most of the Vale. Even parts of Newport like Marshfield should really be considered as Cardiff. This is why population count is such a poor metric for city size, and how Leeds can be considered the second biggest city in the UK when it clearly isn't. If you stretched Cardiff's boundaries to its actual suburban area then it would be closer to 500,000.

If we're only talking of city centres, think about how long it would take you to walk from the edge of the civic centre to the bay. Cardiff only feels compact because nobody ever goes beyond the shopping districts, so they never really get a sense of the real size. There's no way small cities like Leicester and Coventry should be considered bigger than Cardiff. If it keeps going the way it is, Cardiff could soon be 6th or 5th. We're already catching up to Bristol. We may have to officially annex Caerphilly, Penarth and the like before long.

Cardiff is a great city with a phenomenal growth rate but I don't see it catching up Bristol anytime soon. Bristol is outpacing Cardiff in most economic indicators.

Cardiff is a great city with a phenomenal growth rate but I don't see it catching up Bristol anytime soon. Bristol is outpacing Cardiff in most economic indicators.

Most sensible indicators, maybe. In more immature terms of tower height and size, we're right on their tail!

I suppose Bristol wasn't a great example. Both Cardiff and Bristol are two UK cities with strong futures.

Spend a day walking around New Zealand's capital Wellington, a small city of around 405,000. Then come back to Cardiff and see how under-developed it is. Wellington doesn't have anywhere near the size of the metro region that Cardiff does either. Despite Auckland being the commercial centre of New Zealand, see some of the businessness which have their HQ in Wellington:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellington#Economy
In comparison, Cardiff has the Admiral Group and a bunch of regional offices and call centres.

People should stop using comparisons with English regional cities as a defence for Cardiff's shortcomings.

But if we are going to make comparisons to English cities, why is Cardiff (a captial city since 1955) lagging behind a minor regional city (Bristol) in the south west of England. Why do so many Welsh people end up living and working in Bristol because there's better pay and better opportunities?

It is great that Cardiff is growing and we are having a construction boom that the city hasn't seen in a long time. I spend a lot of time in Bristol and I don't anywhere near the same level of planned projects.

But outside of London, the city that's really kicking off in a big way is Manchester. In terms of economic growith, business development (second for financial services to London), transport, construction etc., and especially tall buildings. This "Northern Powerhouse" has gone from being a political soundbite to a reality. All this talk about Heathrow and few people would notice that they've announced a £1Billion expansion of Manchester airport, with even more plans to link it up with major world airport hubs.

Cardiff is a great city with a phenomenal growth rate but I don't see it catching up Bristol anytime soon. Bristol is outpacing Cardiff in most economic indicators.

Most sensible indicators, maybe. In more immature terms of tower height and size, we're right on their tail!

I suppose Bristol wasn't a great example. Both Cardiff and Bristol are two UK cities with strong futures.

Actually, we overtook Bristol on that score long ago! Bristol has a height limit of 60m that's been in place for decades. We're well clear of that with Captial Tower and our recent developments leaves them for dead.

Bristol is not a minor regional city. It's the only real city in the whole of the South West, which I imagine has a population close to that of Wales, so its catchment is quite large.

It's easy to develop a city in New Zealand, when you only have one other major conurbation to compete with. The UK (and most of Europe) has a very different set up to the rest of the world, in that instead of 3 or 4 massive cities (look at Australia), we have smaller regional cities of a much great number. This has its pros and cons, but regardless, it's the reason why we shouldn't compare Cardiff to cities outside Europe.