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Old Posted Jan 25, 2012, 7:56 PM
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Why Are Skylines Roughly Conical?

Why Are Skylines Roughly Conical?


January 25, 2012

Read More: http://www.carfreeinbigd.com/2012/01...y-conical.html

Quote:
.....

Spatial integration began as a scientific examination searching for objective realities to urbanism. Why were cities and their patterns so similar? Where and when have we begun to go wrong? And is the aesthetic, subjective driven world of Modernist architecture partially to blame? Completely independent of this work, the Duany brothers saw similarities in the gradient of intensification of cities as you got closer to the core with various ecologies, particularly coastal regions.

- Likewise, cities have a similar hierarchy. The most connected places, have the highest degree of integration, which in turn means the highest degree of opportunity. Where there exists the greatest demand, to which the market responds with supply. Building space. Where demand is greater than supply exists the most opportunity for developers. Where integration is highest is the most opportunity for every citizen to meet their needs for social and economic exchange.

- This concept exists locally, within one city, as well as globally, amongst all cities. New York, London, Tokyo, Paris, etc., are global cities because they are the most connected, both locally and globally. Within a single city, you also have a hierarchy of centers. All cities are polycentric once they get above the scale of the tiniest of hamlets. This is what sprawl apologist hacks like Joel Kotkin fail to understand. When they talk of polycentric, sprawl-based cities as polycentric cities of the future, they fail to see that New York is also polycentric. Those centers just blur together rather seamlessly, except where geographic barriers (water bodies) or physical barriers (such as highways) divide and isolate them.

- What they found was that there is a correlation between traffic and value. Just like with any network, particularly the web. The most trafficked sites have the most value. Remember that traffic doesn't mean cars, but people. This is a direct relationship in what I call logical cities. High pedestrian areas have far more people moving past, and capable of interacting with you (economically or socially) in these high traffic areas than does car-based traffic, which has to turn, wait for lights, find parking, etc., all of which accounts for increasing degrees of disconnection, dislocation, and inflexibility.

.....



While this is Dallas and the exercise is admittedly abstract, I want to show why downtowns have the biggest buildings. And why severing the interconnectivity to them, is why many of Dallas's buildings in downtown are quite empty, for example. As I have written before, Dallas experienced a building boom (high-rises) at the exact same time that the city, state, and federal level were gorging on highway building. Supply was being added while demand was being undercut, shipped out towards the suburbs.

Compare our growth to say, L'Eixample neighborhoods in Barcelona and Valencia. These were rapidly expanding areas, literally doubling city size, but they did so aggregately. These are both now considered the "old money" areas of those particular cities, and very much still central city as growth then enveloped them.












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  #2  
Old Posted Jan 25, 2012, 8:53 PM
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Oddly, most of the height in Chicago's skyline is on the edges.
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Old Posted Jan 25, 2012, 9:00 PM
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That's the case because MOST (not all) but most cities have a center (Downtown) where ALL the business happens and where all the MAJOR companies choose to settle and thus where all the tall buildings are.
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Old Posted Jan 25, 2012, 10:23 PM
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Old Posted Jan 25, 2012, 11:37 PM
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Why are all the threads in this subforum so stupid these days?
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Old Posted Jan 25, 2012, 11:55 PM
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I would argue that maybe the majority of typical U.S. and Canadian skylines are "roughly conical." And this obviously is not the case in the rest of the world (save for a few in Europe - Canary Wharf, Moscow IBC, etc.).
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Old Posted Jan 26, 2012, 12:17 AM
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Agreed. Most of the best skylines in the world are obviously more linear than conical, although the conic shape can be seen in some parts of a skyline, like Lower Manhattan in the 30s and now.
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Old Posted Jan 26, 2012, 12:25 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by vid View Post
Why are all the threads in this subforum so stupid these days?
It may be "stupid" to you but it's way over my head. I'm like W T F?
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Old Posted Jan 26, 2012, 12:42 AM
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It may be "stupid" to you but it's way over my head. I'm like W T F?
You're harder on yourself than anyone else.
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Old Posted Jan 26, 2012, 3:13 AM
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This would be the Manhattan skyline after 2016. Does it look conical to you?

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Old Posted Jan 26, 2012, 3:31 AM
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Ugh the Dallas skyline is not conical like shown. Depends on where you view it from.
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Old Posted Jan 26, 2012, 4:00 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by photoLith View Post
Ugh the Dallas skyline is not conical like shown. Depends on where you view it from.
Very good point. In fact, that's true of many cities. Some views of Houston show a conical shape, but other views, especially from the east, show a shape that's way out of balance, largely because of Chase Tower. The best seems to be from the north coming south on I-45, or coming in from the west on Allen Parkway. Austin is similar, in that some views are just great, while others are not.
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Old Posted Jan 26, 2012, 4:36 AM
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Not conical skyline shot of Dallas.


http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&c...12&tx=65&ty=77

If the writer of this article had any smarts they would map whether a skyline was conical or not by using a map and determining on the map where the highest and lowest points of a skyline were and then view it three dimensionally and then put a 3-d pyramid over the map. I can assure you that if they did it this way, the right way, than they would find most skylines are not conical or pyramidal. And many cities like Houston have more than 1 skyline. Here in Houston, we have the downtown skyline, the Medical Center skyline, and the Galleria area skyline; which has a very spread out skyline and is suburban in nature.
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Last edited by photoLith; Jan 26, 2012 at 4:48 AM.
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Old Posted Jan 26, 2012, 4:38 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by photoLith View Post
Depends on where you view it from.
Bingo. /End Thread.
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Old Posted Jan 26, 2012, 5:12 AM
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Neither is Boston's skyline.

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  #16  
Old Posted Jan 26, 2012, 5:54 AM
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Dallas sure looks short with that neon.
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  #17  
Old Posted Jan 26, 2012, 6:09 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wrab View Post
Oddly, most of the height in Chicago's skyline is on the edges.
Chicago.



Detroit.

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  #18  
Old Posted Jan 26, 2012, 2:22 PM
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The Toronto skyline has 3 "peaks", the CN Tower, the Financial district, and Uptown (Yonge-Bloor).



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Old Posted Jan 26, 2012, 3:41 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wrab View Post
Oddly, most of the height in Chicago's skyline is on the edges.
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.
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Old Posted Jan 26, 2012, 8:07 PM
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^Win.
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