Yikes. To be completely honest, I was not expecting this post and this post to blow up in the way that they did. But hey, here we are and here's the blogTO article: "Developer shames City of Toronto into issuing permit for bold new skyscraper." What all of this suggests is that most people are shocked by how long it takes and how difficult it is to build a building. I mean, what I wrote about is just one sliver among the countless other things that need to come together for it to happen. But to my mind, these are productive discussions to be having. Because the more everyone is aware, the more likely we are to improve things.
Brian Potter, of Construction Physics, recently tried to determine which cities build skyscrapers the fastest.
Here's how he went about that:
He started by looking up the 50 largest cities in the world on Wikipedia
He then pulled data from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat to get a list of every skyscraper completed between 2000-2020 that was over 100 meters, had a start and completion date, and had a gross floor area
The result was a list of 986 skyscrapers completed in 39 cities, most of which (~740) were completed in the US, China, Japan, and Canada
Finally, he calculated completed square feet per year and made some charts
Here are the results:
