Quote:
Originally Posted by wrab
Oddly, most of the height in Chicago's skyline is on the edges.
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Uhhh no. Chicago's skyline is three cones. Actually Chicago's skyline might be the purest example of market forces at play in the world. Each of the three "peaks" of Chicago's skyline are centers of economic critical mass where you have a cluster of supertall buildings with shorter buildings declining from there. These represent the logical epicenters of downtown (Michigan Ave/Water Tower, Michigan Ave/Chicago River, and The Loop. Everything trails down from these peaks where landvalues are highest.
Then you also have the lake where you can clearly see the rising land values as one gets closer and closer to the lakefront the buildings get taller and taller until the tallest have unobstructed views. Chicago's skyline is almost like a bar graph of land values.
You don't think this looks conical:
travelpod.com
or This:
photoshelter.com
or This:
flickr.com
Sure some larger cities start to take on a "Dome" shape as they hit the ceiling of where current engineering limits the price effectiveness of going higher (see the loop where you have many buildings peaking out around 700-800' or Manhattan where it's essentially a giant loaf shape of buildings), but as a rule skylines tend to take on certain shapes as a result of market forces.