STILL under construction, the Shard, a 72-storey skyscraper near London Bridge measuring 310 metres, is already the most visible building in the capital. When it is completed in April 2013, it will break another record, as the tallest inhabited building in Europe - Renzo Piano's pointy monument will include ten flats, as well as shops, offices and a smart hotel. In Britain, tower living has long been confined to stigmatised blocks of social housing. The Shard and other new skyscrapers have made it the preserve of the super-rich. In the 1950s and 1960s hundreds of tower blocks were built across Britain to replace bombed-out and slum housing, meant to be beacons of modernity with inside loos and central heating. But many were poorly and cheaply built. Tower blocks became symbols of all that was wrong with council housing, seen as ghettoes of deprivation, isolation and crime. For a long time that social stigma, combined with restrictive planning rules and a powerful heritage lobby, inhibited further lofty schemes. The result is that British cities - even London, home to 13% of the population - are mostly low-rise. In the capital "high-rise" blocks of more than five storeys are surprisingly scarce. Skyscrapers are even rarer: only around 50 blocks of more than 100 metres are being built or in use. Tower blocks are not intrinsically bad places to live, reckons Anne Power of the London School of Economics (LSE). Poor security and maintenance are easily remedied. Building technology has improved: lifts are more reliable; plumbing is good; noise insulation better; steel and glass are prettier alternatives to slab concrete. Many people have come round to this idea. Some older social-housing blocks have been renewed. Erno Goldfinger's Trellick Tower in west London, for example, was listed in 1998; most flats there are now privately owned, with two-bedroom homes selling for upwards of £400,000 ($635,000). There has also been a frenzy of new developments, such as the 140-metre Doon Street Tower on the South Bank and the 148-metre Strata Tower in Elephant & Castle. Glasgow, Manchester and Newcastle have modern towers too. Demographic trends make London particularly suited to tower living. "We have no alternative but to have density in cities," says Ms Power. The drift to the suburbs has slowed and the capital's population is predicted to swell by a further 10% by 2031. Households are getting smaller - more folk live alone, as young people delay marriage and old people live longer. High-rise living may appeal to singletons, whereas families often shun them. Skyscrapers, particularly swanky London ones, are also popular with overseas buyers. Foreigners have bought about half of the 200 flats sold off-plan in the Heron, a glitzy new 36-storey block in the City; two-bedroom apartments cost more than £1m. Rocketing prices for prime property in London have made such buildings viable. Residential rents have increased by more than 50% since 2002 in the West End, for example, faster than commercial rents, says Anthony Duggan of Drivers Jonas Deloitte, a property consultancy. But London high life may soon reach its limits. Because towers take so long to plan and construct, the current crop reflect a vision up to a decade old, reckons Nick Offer of Arup, an engineering firm. Economic conditions and the scale of such projects mean that only the very brave will invest now, he says. And the political climate is no longer conducive to building new tower blocks. In 2010 the coalition scrapped the previous, Labour government's density targets, which were designed to encourage developers to build more units. Instead it has endorsed "garden cities," planned communities based around low-rise homes and green space - the very opposite of building communities in the sky.