Why We Shouldn't Build Skyscrapers

Who would win? The world's tallest skyscraper built by oil billionaires, or a few 10-story commie blocks?

[AdamSomething]

As a side note, I feel like I was more charitable to skyscrapers than I should have been, as if they're a genuine attempt at trying to improve a city, and not just corporate dick-measuring contests and/or real estate speculation schemes.

[hammond]

I can honestly say I have never built a skyscraper.

[jasonquigley]

I'm a HVAC engineer. I used to be a skyscraper fan, but having worked on a few of these buildings I've concluded that they are not good for the urban environment, compared to buildings under 10 stories. In addition to what Adam said:
1. The systems for these buildings are highly complicated, which is good for the prestige(and paychecks) of the engineers working on it, but smaller buildings can use much simpler, and efficient out of the box designs. Every tall skyscraper is essentially a prototype, which means it's systems are more prone to failures, and designs are more likely to contain mistakes.
2. They are large, inflexible single use structures. A smaller building can easily be repurposed into something else, and if necessary knocked down. Skyscrapers, on the other hand, are nearly impossible to demolish @at least not without serious health and safety issues), and very difficult to repurpose as needs change. That office space can only ever be used as office space, and further more you'll be limited by the foresight of engineers and architects living 50 years ago. Good luck finding spare parts for the chiller plant whose manufacturer dissappeared 30 years ago. Heaven help you if you want to do a green retrofit.
3. They are inefficient, you would be surprised how little usable floor space these towers have. Over half the floor area is taken up with elevators, structural supports and utilities. On a building under 10 stories this is usually less than a quarter, on a 6 story walk up maybe less than a 10th.

Skyscrapers suffer from diseconomies of scale, and the main reason they're built is to satisfy the egoes of the wealthy men who own them, and the architects and engineers who design them.

[anarchosherman]

This man is pissing off an architecture community I didn’t think existed

[oskarnone]

My main concern with skyscrapers is their long term maintenance. Imagine having to renovate, or, god forbid, demolish, a 50 story building that's closely packed with other 50 story buildings. Even if this is possible, it's likely very costly and would be a logistical nightmare. Same goes for any structural defects or failures that can occur with a building as big as a skyscraper, eg. millenium tower in san francisco.

[Maxchillin]

I think we should build 200 story hyper towers where residents are brought to their floors by hyperlifts and they commute to work by star ship from the roof

[harryvpn]

That's why we need the 255 block height limit

[edi]

There's another problem: wind
I'm not talking about the skyscraper having to withstand the power of the wind, but the building blocking the wind or worse funneling it. The prior can cause nasty stagnant air and the latter winds that can knock you over.

[santiagoorgeira]

The "deserted offices" part is SO true, I live in a city that has a huge office town, the centre is literally 99% office buildings and mabye fast food for the office workers, so by day it is VERY busy, and by night it is one if the most dangerous parts of town do to there not being a single person there except mabye a mugger and a junkie

[mattc]

Because if we keep scraping the sky, it's going to get all scratched up.

[strategossable]

"in 99% of cases, you don't even need to go above 10 floors"
Me, living on the 13th floor of an apartment complex *looks around nervously*

[oditeomnes]

Singaporian city planner: "Ok we have two choices: Skyscrapers or invade Malasya to get more land".

[laurivirtanen]

New idea: turn every skyscraper into a giant garage to store everyone's cars and turn every carpark into a building.
This would cost billions, help no one and waste everyone's time since cars can no longer be parked in more than 10 places per city.

[brotlowskyrgseg]

One problem not mentioned here is that providing basic utilities becomes significantly more complicated and expensive when you build really tall. That's why skyscrapers need to waste a cosiderable amount of their floor space for mechanical floors solely dedicated to that purpose.

[mrmatejator]

"5 10-stories commie blocks was all it took to beat world's tallest skyscraper" I am dying of laughter...

[jonesjohnson]

As a civil engineer I'd like to point out this:
- Everything above 8 stories becomes exponentially harder. Moment forces from the wind have a longer arm to the support in the ground. More weight leads to more structural support to carry it, leading to more weight. Elevator cables are also a pain. But that last one is a problem with a solution in a not so distant future.
- Thing is however that I don't necessarily agree with the sentiment though. I can live with sky scrapers being packed away from city centres like at La Defense in Paris or Moscow city.
Overall I prefer density over sprawling cities. The Burj Khalifa ground is not a good metric. It's of course a vanity project. Many other skyscrapers are due to high prices on the ground they stand and do not waste that much ground space.
- Some institutions, such as hospitals, require patients to get from one department to another asap. Long hallways kill people. Lifts are much faster. Hence why many highrises now being built in my otherwise flat Denmark are hospitals.
- The problem I see unadressed here are sunlight, wind and public infrastructure.
Skyscrapers take sunlight from the surroundings, winds can be redirected in bad ways (or good ways) in addition to affecting the building and its occupants in several ways.
And most importantly, you need a good and robust public infrastructure to haul a huge amount of people during rush hours, though that's always true no matter what.
So the most important factor as to whether skyscrapers are good or bad is how well they perform and the city plan.
They can be expensive when it comes to price, but as long as there's a buyer, that shouldn't matter.

[greghowell]

I’d love to see you revisit this, comparing the Burj to the Pentagon, which is the largest office building on Earth, and is only five stories, and contains a five acre (two hectare) park in the center.

Also, it is possible to move between any two points in the Pentagon in under ten minutes, in spite of it being nearly half a kilometer across.

[natelarouge]

Issue is mostly spacing, when you can’t build outward like in NYC or Hong Kong, you have to build up

[AbinashAdhikari]

Tokyo is the worst example you can give of this. There is literally no space here than to go up. Those skyscrapers are literally just office spaces.

[smbarbour]

Problem #3: Alienation - I live in a small town and I don't even know my neighbors even after 20 years. This has nothing to do with high-rise buildings nor solved by any different size of building.