[hnlmorg]

London earns millions every day from office workers coming into the city, paying for food, drinks, and other local services. It's not like us commuters are draining money from your local economy.

Plus if you didn't want your home town to be invaded by commuters each day then a city, any city in fact, is absolutely the worst place you could chose to live.

[AlbertCory]

I was in Paris for a conference in the mid-90s. Actually, it was in La Defense which is out in the 'burbs. In Paris, people live in the city and commute out to work. They can't build skyscrapers within the city.

This was before WFH was a thing.

[hnlmorg]

While you're right that the ground isn't strong enough (which itself is a fascinating subject) for skyscrapers in the city centre, there are still plenty of multi-story office blocks. Plus there are plenty of business districts that fall outside the city centre but still very much within the parameter of Paris itself and those districts do have sky scrapers (I've spend some time in one of those districts myself). https://www.consorto.com/blog/paris-is-top-for-european-offi...

This isn't that unusual for European cities. Often you'll find the city centre will be buildings of historic significance so a lot of the office blocks in the city centre will still be multi-story but not 10s of floors. Even in London the skyscrapers are generally just outside the centre.

From what I gather about London, most of the skyscapers are pretty expensive units to rent so many offices find the relatively smaller blocks a more attractive option. Usually renting space from those skyscapers are more a signalling of importance -- or rather a business attempting to signal that.