If there’s one thing that the tallest building in Western Europe is good for, it’s showing you how vast London is, and how empty the rest of Southeast England feels.

It was a pretty clear day when I went up to the really quite expensive observation deck at the Shard. I could see clear past the radio masts at Crystal Palace and Alexandra Palace. Wembley Stadium didn’t seem that far away. Canary Wharf and St. Paul’s Cathedral seemed like things I could jump to if I got up a good head of steam.

You can see train tracks as the veins of the city. You get the sense that the Recession is a distant memory from the number of cranes dotting the skyline. You feel that beyond the city limits lies grassland and not much else.

There wasn’t much of a wait when I visited the Shard, but unlike the Orbit, I got the feeling that it wasn’t because of the location, but rather the cost of entry. The viewing decks on the 68th and 72nd floors were by no means empty, though. The interactive telescopes that overlay building names as you look out them were all in use, and a few people puttered in and out of the gift shop by the elevators, picking up and putting down Shard trinkets.

The Shard, which itself is in such contrast from the rest of London’s skyscrapers – massive and set apart from the other clusters of towers – reminds you how London sticks out from the rest of the U.K. It is a big city in a small country. Roughly 21% of the U.K.’s population lives in the London metro area. When you are 72 stories up looking out on the city, you do feel a little bit like you are at the center of the universe.

London is in a state of flux. Skyscrapers and apartment blocks are shooting up across the city as it tries to maintain its traditional identity. Between 1964 and 2002, London only built three skyscrapers taller than 150m – it has since built 11 more. 24 buildings taller than 100m have been built since 2000, too.

As the city grows, areas like the Stratford City ghost town will get filled in. Other areas, like Earls Court and Battersea, are undergoing long-term redevelopment. The city is slowly transforming form boroughs of row homes and commons to apartment complexes and tower blocks.

Looking out over the city on a bright Friday afternoon late in 2014, you can see it all. Many people are of the mindset that London is losing its character, but from my vantage point high above the city, I see evolution. I see a city trying to maintain its status as one of the ‘alpha’ cities of the world, or maybe regain it from competitors.

Many of the big projects the city is undertaking, from Crossrail to the Olympic Park redevelopment, are not quick solutions. It’s going to take another decade, most likely, before the infrastructure that’s being laid down right now is in full use. But these undertakings are what allowed me to be a tourist in my own town. There are exciting things happening. The city is metastasizing. London is no longer the city I grew up in, in many ways, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

I can’t wait to see what has changed the next time I’m back.

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