The developer of Bishopsgate Goodsyard is finally to restart the long-delayed £900m scheme, but without the most controversial element – PLP’s towering blocks of flats. Cue celebrations all round. A significant scheme that’s already taken hundreds of hours of many architects’ time can get moving. And the people who feared their homes would be overshadowed and the skyline trashed are appeased.

Yet while opponents of the towers clinked bottles of craft beer, the developer remained curiously muted. In truth the Hammerson/Ballymore joint venture is still smarting from the pasting it’s taken since it first began dreaming about this 4.4ha plot more than 10 years ago: celebrity-studded local hostility, mayoral call-in, multiple re-designs.

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