In other words, are tall buildings a prerequisite to competing in today's global economy? It's an interesting question. And Jason Barr -- professor of economics at Rutgers University-Newark -- does think they are an important ingredient. So much so that he wrote a book on the topic called, Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World's Tallest Skyscrapers. While Jason does acknowledge that not every city needs them, he does suggest that not having them could hinder a global city:
If you look at Paris' global ranking in terms of its importance in the world economy, as measured by the size and number of international firms, it's falling. Paris in 2000 was ranked fourth, and by 2020, it was down to eight, losing out to skyscraper cities such as Singapore and Dubai.
In the last decade, Paris has shrunk by 122,000 residents. As reported by Forbes, "Many of those leaving are choosing either the suburbs or countryside around Paris, or they are relocating to France's smaller cities such as Bordeaux, Lyon, and Toulouse." By limiting its building stock, Paris is driving up housing prices, pushing out residents, and causing suburban sprawl.
While I agree that tall buildings are important "geography-shrinking machines", what we're really talking about is using land more intensely. We're talking about urban density. But you don't necessarily need tall buildings to have high population densities. Consider Barcelona, which is one of the densest cities in Europe, and consider this comparison between Paris (few tall buildings) and Vancouver (more tall buildings).
So is the argument simply that density is good for cities, and that tall buildings are one way to achieve that? Or is it that, now that cities like Paris are built out (albeit at very high densities), the only option for growth is to go up? I guess I'll have to read his book.
The Quay Quarter Tower in Sydney has been just been awarded the "best new tall building" of 2023 by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH). Deigned by 3XN and BVN, it's a great adaptive reuse story.
The project is a renovation and expansion of an existing 1970s building. And the team managed to retain 65% of the original structure (slabs, columns, and beams) and 95% of the original core.
This results, according to their calculation, in 12,000 tons of embodied carbon savings. The equivalent of 35,000 flights between Sydney and Melbourne. At the same time, the team managed to add 45,000 m2 of new floor area to the site by grafting new slabs onto the existing ones.
But let's get back to these carbon savings.
According to this site, there are 37 direct fights between Sydney and Melbourne each day. That's about 13,505 flights per year, meaning that the carbon savings from not fully demolishing this building (and starting fresh) are equal to about 2.6 years of people not flying back and forth between these two cities.
If you consider how long buildings typically last (this one was relatively young at under 50 years), it kind of makes buildings seem less bad. Of course, we're only talking about and comparing embodied carbon. There's also the ongoing operation of the building.
In any event, a deserving project. Congrats to the team. For more on the project, click here.
Photo via Dezeen
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:
And here's one thing he had to say about them:
Interestingly enough, the huge outlier in slow construction isn't the US, but Canada, with an average skyscraper construction speed of half that of the US’s.
For a lot more information on this topic, click here.