Will the US ever keep up with world skyscrapers?

[Zapatan]

2016? That seems a bit early, but we'll wait and see.

Originally Posted by THE BIG APPLE

While all this was going on what was happening in the United States of America, the INVENTOR of the SKYSCRAPER.

Not enough unfortunately, While the USA is starting to build more skyscrapers than it ever has, certain foreign countries, mainly China are building much more. Hopefully the US can get used to the fast pace and build more.

Showing off DOES matter to a certain degree.

[Owlhorn]

- The US doesn't build skyscrapers. Development companies build them when they feel there can be money made off of them. This is not true in some of these places. The premise of the thread is flawed. President Obama can't say, we need to show off more and build taller even if buildings are empty.

- Have you actually looked at the construction and proposals currently happening in New York City? There is a lot of tall building going on right now. Most impressively, these buildings actually fill up. Most of the world doesn't have the demand to fill up these buildings. New York does.

[Roadcruiser1]

You seem to think it is a good thing to show off, but it is not. China and Dubai are right now going through an economic bubble. The bubble will sooner or later pop. This is New York City and not a city that is going to become an economic bubble, because once it becomes one the economy will crash sooner or later.

[uaarkson]

Dubai's bubble already popped. The skyscraper boom there ended the day BK topped out.

[jigglysquishy]

Originally Posted by Zapatan

I can't believe people are saying "should we have to?"

America invented the skyscraper, and even if it doesn't have the worlds tallest building it should at least try to a certain extent to keep up. People are saying, "Oh they're just trying to show off." Obviously! And their cities will start to look way cooler because of it.

Having the WTB doesn't matter IMO, but having skyscrapers of a world scale should be a priority for any world country. The Chinese towers will fill up even if they are not fully occupied, and even if they aren't they are still there! The ESB wasn't completely occupied.

Anyone who says, "they're just showing off" seems a bit jealous to some degree. What's wrong with showing off? It's human nature.

Skyscrapers have a purpose. When cities need ultra dense office space or the extremely wealthy need want to have lavish quarters skyscrapers are needed.

Lower Manhattan is little more than 1km^2. That gives you a sense of scale for how big a downtown needs to be. Ideal residential density is NOT in skyscraper form. Its in 5-7 story urban buildings.

Skyscrapers have a purpose. Showing off to the world isn't it.

Why do people move to a city? Its rarely (<0.01%) because of tall skyscrapers. Things like crime rate, economy, education quality, urban landscape are all decisive factors in determining a successful city. Skyscrapers, are not.

[Chicago103]

Originally Posted by jigglysquishy

Why do people move to a city? Its rarely (<0.01%) because of tall skyscrapers. Things like crime rate, economy, education quality, urban landscape are all decisive factors in determining a successful city. Skyscrapers, are not.

Your right that people rarely move to a city exclusively because of tall skyscrapers. I am not for a move to Dubai because they now have a taller building than Chicago, not at all. However having a super tall building traditionally has been a sign of a successful and human scaled urban city, an effect rather than a cause. New York City and Chicago became the largest and most sucessfull cities and one of the effects was large infrastructure and buildings which produced world's tallest buildings at given points in their histories. Honestly Dubai and to an extent other asian and middle eastern cities have changed this phenomenon, cities BECAME well known because of world's tallest buildings. I had never heard of Kuala Lumpur before the Petrons Towers and I had never heard of Dubai until they built the Burj Al Arab and caught my attention more with the construction of the Burj Khalifa, I identify these cities mostly through skyscrapers. However the world had heard of New York City before the Empire State Building and of Chicago before the Sears Tower.

[jigglysquishy]

Not all successful cities have world famous skyscrapers.

Paris, Tokyo, London, Rome, Cairo, etc.

[mhays]

The 5-7 story thing is personal preference only. I disagree, personally. Highrises, if FARs are also high, can provide a lot more density. Also, some of us like to live higher off the ground due to views, distance from noise, etc.

Highrise housing pencils better than highrise offices in some economies and locations. Basically you need a lot of people who care enough about those views, proximity, urbanity, etc. Costs and supply and demand vary, but if you have the ingredients highrises can follow.

That said, I don't like it when London or Paris go highrise. That usually signals places that aren't worth visiting in those cities.

[Roadcruiser1]

Originally Posted by jigglysquishy

Not all successful cities have world famous skyscrapers.

Paris, Tokyo, London, Rome, Cairo, etc.

That is going to change soon. London is getting the Shard, and Tokyo has their Sky Tree. Paris is getting their Hermitage Center.

[THE BIG APPLE]

I want to hear a seven year old say he knows what a shard is. As beautiful as that building is, it'll take it being empty for 25 years, a plane crashing in to it (I hope not), and it being the WTB (which it's not) for 40 years, to have a seven year old kid know it's name. But I know plenty of seven year olds know what the Empire State Building is, a true landmark. He'll probably think a Sky Tree is monkey bars. He won't even know what a hertaige sentar is.

[Chicago103]

Originally Posted by THE BIG APPLE

I want to hear a seven year old say he knows what a shard is. As beautiful as that building is, it'll take it being empty for 25 years, a plane crashing in to it (I hope not), and it being the WTB (which it's not) for 40 years, to have a seven year old kid know it's name. But I know plenty of seven year olds know what the Empire State Building is, a true landmark. He'll probably think a Sky Tree is monkey bars. He won't even know what a hertaige sentar is.

Your right, even the Sears Tower doesn't have the reputation of the ESB or WTC. The Sears Tower being really well known (by sight not just name) I wonder if it is mostly a midwestern thing. I mean when I lived in downstate Illinois everyone knew what the Sears Tower is and generally what it looks like, but I wonder if the average person living in California or even the east coast knows or thinks of it.

[Tom Servo]

Why come the US don't have downtowns with more taller skyscrapers?! Boo hiss.

This obsession with super-tall buildings bores me.

[jd3189]

Originally Posted by Zapatan

I can't believe people are saying "should we have to?"

America invented the skyscraper, and even if it doesn't have the worlds tallest building it should at least try to a certain extent to keep up. People are saying, "Oh they're just trying to show off." Obviously! And their cities will start to look way cooler because of it.

Having the WTB doesn't matter IMO, but having skyscrapers of a world scale should be a priority for any world country. The Chinese towers will fill up even if they are not fully occupied, and even if they aren't they are still there! The ESB wasn't completely occupied.

Anyone who says, "they're just showing off" seems a bit jealous to some degree. What's wrong with showing off? It's human nature.

I would like some more tall buildings in the U.S.,but here, skyscrapers are built by demand.Dubai didn't need the Burj to be at the height it is now to become suitable. It was just to make a statement. Barely anyone has been living in the tower since its opening. Wasting that much resources when you could use the money to fix the economic troubles we have today is the dumbest thing America could ever do.

[untitledreality]

Originally Posted by Roadcruiser1

and Tokyo has their Sky Tree

Which has been built solely out of necessity for data transmission purposes, not to dick fence with other countries.

[Zapatan]

^There's nothing wrong with dick fencing a little. Even though skyscrapers don't make great cities necessarily they are still awesome, NYC would not be NYC without it's towers, nor would Chicago.

It would just be very sad, very sad indeed if the USA's skyscraper days were over. It doesn't need a WTB, but it still needs something IMO. After the (maybe) few towers in NYC, and possibly in SF and LA there really is nothing else that will be built in the USA after that.

[uaarkson]

I don't know how you could possibly think our skyscraper days are over. Remember 2001? Now that was a year to worry about the end of American skyscrapers.

[Zapatan]

^True but,

If tall skyscrapers are not all that practical, and the USA is done showing off, then we won't ever see any again.

I'm not saying that's exactly what is going to happen, but I'm just playing devils advocate.

[miketoronto]

Look at all the excuses and people thinking the USA does not need to build tall anymore. And this is on a forum of people who are into skyscrapers.

I think the lack of building tall in the USA(and Canada) points to a very sad point in our development, where our companies, government, and people just don't give a crap anymore about anything. No tall buildings, no big mega projects or dreams of development. We have basically since the 1990's, turned into nations where doing the minimum at best is considered good.

So make fun of China, or Dubai, etc. But they have one thing our countries are missing at the moment, and that is vision and a dream to be better than they are now.

So yeah we may not need to build tall at the moment. But I think not building tall shows that our central city economies continue to stagnate while suburbs continue to grow, our companies are cheaping out, and society is getting even more and more complacent and just does not care.

[shadyunltd]

Originally Posted by miketoronto

Look at all the excuses and people thinking the USA does not need to build tall anymore. And this is on a forum of people who are into skyscrapers.

I think the lack of building tall in the USA(and Canada) points to a very sad point in our development, where our companies, government, and people just don't give a crap anymore about anything. No tall buildings, no big mega projects or dreams of development. We have basically since the 1990's, turned into nations where doing the minimum at best is considered good.

So make fun of China, or Dubai, etc. But they have one thing our countries are missing at the moment, and that is vision and a dream to be better than they are now.

So yeah we may not need to build tall at the moment. But I think not building tall shows that our central city economies continue to stagnate while suburbs continue to grow, our companies are cheaping out, and society is getting even more and more complacent and just does not care.

I disagree. Money is just better allocated elsewhere. Further, most of the buildings you are just speculation bets. It's all fuelling that real estate bubble over there which is going to pop as soon as, in the case of China, the Central Government does not have enough liquidity to bail out local governments (which could very well happen in the coming decade).

A better quality of life does not come with skyscrapers; infrastructure spending on skyscrapers is only relevant if there is a need; it's well documented that right now, in China and Dubai, they are more than meeting demand and this will hurt them in the long run. Likewise, only NYC can sustain so many large scale projects at once because it has the market to support those projects. For once in a very long while, America is spending and developing smartly and props to that.

Now, it's time for America to develop high speed rail, densify city cores (hopefully getting rid of downtown highways), repair bridges, water pipelines, electric grid, etc.).

[Chicago103]

Originally Posted by miketoronto

Look at all the excuses and people thinking the USA does not need to build tall anymore. And this is on a forum of people who are into skyscrapers.

I think the lack of building tall in the USA(and Canada) points to a very sad point in our development, where our companies, government, and people just don't give a crap anymore about anything. No tall buildings, no big mega projects or dreams of development. We have basically since the 1990's, turned into nations where doing the minimum at best is considered good.

So make fun of China, or Dubai, etc. But they have one thing our countries are missing at the moment, and that is vision and a dream to be better than they are now.

So yeah we may not need to build tall at the moment. But I think not building tall shows that our central city economies continue to stagnate while suburbs continue to grow, our companies are cheaping out, and society is getting even more and more complacent and just does not care.

I think you are on to something here. Many of the tallest buildings in our largest cities were built in the 1970's when they were in the middle of their worst population declines. These towers were often built as symbols of confidence in the city's future and projected an optimistic vision of the city. In fact when people talk about the time when "cities and downtowns almost died" I point to skyscrapers like the The World Trade Center and Sears Tower to point out that not everything was looking down even then. Of course I understand the idea that mega skyscrapers don't necessarily produce the type of traditional urbanism most desired but in the same token they sometimes became powerful symbols to demonstrate to the rest of the world that their city was not going away. Our cities were hemorrhaging people, had crime problems, riots, torn apart by expressways and increasing suburbanization and in some cases major municipal financial problems and yet they built world record breaking skyscrapers in the late 1960's and early 1970's.

Today on the other hand the central cities are revitalizing to such a great extent, in particular the demand for downtown residential and the move of more and more companies back downtown. However in spite of all these advantages we now have we can't even build something on the scale that we did in the 1970's (the new WTC in NYC an exception, but even that is more equaling rather than surpassing what was there before). It is one example of such contradiction I see in modern society, we have so much going for us and yet we can't seem to get the same bang for our buck that our ancestors did with so much less. I love Chicago's Trump Tower, Aqua and a number of new tall skyscrapers we have but really we needed something like the Chicago Spire being built in order for this generation to make it's mark on the city's skyline, at least if surpassing what previous generations built even matters anymore. I know people call me out on this and say "you are just being naively nestalgic, the present is way better than the past in every way", etc. Well I am not saying that today sucks or that we can't do it, rather I am saying I know we can do it so why the heck haven't we? Why do we keep building things that are pretty good but never quite break the records anymore? It is like mediocrity is the new virtue in America, that may be a bit harsh, perhaps a better analogy is that we have become like the athlete simply content with winning the silver or bronze metal and not really caring about the gold metal.