Originally Posted by bunt_q
You guys have no experience in development, do you? This thread is full of statements that are just leagues away from the reality of how and why buildings are built in the U.S.
Zapatan, how old are you? I only ask because your take on development seems very immature. Or you just don't understand/agree with the way things are done in the U.S.
The most important question you need to ask and answer is - who builds buildings in the U.S.? I don't think you understand the concept of private development.
The U.S. does not build skyscrapers. Society does not build skyscrapers. Even cities do not build skyscrapers. Private companies build them. Every U.S. city is different - in terms of regulations on development, and in terms of demand. But the most important thing - skyscrapers are built to make money. If they don't make economic sense, they don't happen, plain and simple.
The lack of skyscrapers in the U.S. has nothing to do with showing off. It has nothing to do with defeatism. It has everything to do with there simply being no financial reason to build supertalls (outside of NYC). And companies tend not to do things that will lose them money if they can help it.
Skyscrapers in many countries (Dubai!) are sort of like state-run factories in socialist economies... they may sound good, but they make absolutely no economic sense, and when they have to compete openly, they often (even usually) fail. Or, they only make financial sense because the rules of the game are different - take away private property and implement central land planning, and suddenly a lot of things can work. But they're not "efficient" in the economic sense.
To answer the question about whether supertalls are likely to happen in the U.S. - no, probably not. The combination of demand for office space, cheap transportation/telecommunication, the economics of tall buildings (which mhays already described), and the peculiarities of land use regulation/local governance in most U.S. metropolitan areas probably means no, we won't build supertalls again.
Again, I'm not sure if you have any academic or professional knowledge of development... but even if wanted to encourage supertalls in U.S. cities, how could we do it? First off, you'd need market demand for 2-million square feet of office space - that alone is a challenge. Second, you'd need to limit competing development, which is also impossible because, in U.S. cities, there are dozens of (competing) local governments, each with their own land use regulations. With that, you'd need a company willing to lease all of that space, that would also be willing to wait three years for construction, and also wouldn't be tempted by other office space that would cost half as much and could be built twice as fast. And sorry, but for U.S. companies, there's not that much money to be made on ego alone. Maybe in the 1920s a big building made sense as a marketing strategy. Today, a clever Super Bowl commercial is worth far more.
I could build myself the tallest tower around, but in a corporate "dick-fencing" match with Steve Jobs or Bill Gates and their low-rise office campuses, I'd still lose. Because they make a ton of money, and that is what is considered "winning" in the U.S. Big buildings don't make people jealous; that's just not how most Americans think. We're much more interested in the livability of our cities these days. I'd much rather have a good streetcar network (19th century technology, maybe, but we sure do miss it) than a new supertall for my city.
Hell, I'm a skyscraper fan, who here isn't? But I wouldn't say tall buildings really impress me per se. As an engineering feat, they're really not all that complicated anymore. If you take away economic/functionality restrictions, I'm not sure there's really any limit to what we could technically build. So what's the point? We went to the moon to prove we could. There's no reason to build to 3,000 feet if you can't fill the building - that's just not a terribly impressive feat - we already know we can do it.
EDIT: Sort of an aside, but there are probably only a handful of places in the U.S. where local zoning would even allow a supertall to be built. Even in Denver, where we technically have no height limit in the downtown core, by the time you run the numbers on FAR maximums and how big of a parcel you'd need to assemble to do it, a 1,000-footer becomes almost impossible; certainly improbable with any floorplates that make even remote economic sense.
I suppose what would impress me is not just building tall, but doing it (a) cheaply and (b) with small footprints. Building modern supertalls for $150 per square foot - now that's something I'd be proud of. I suppose that's sort of like the dream of a cheap, pollution free, unlimited energy source for my car, too.
|
Prev
Linear Mode
