How America Lost the Skyscraper Race

[jamahir]

Exactly, a well planned city should have public and transport facilities to serve the people, buses, subways, light rail commute trains

Yes.

but anyway, this thread is about skyscrapers, not city planning.

Same thing, yes ?

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Yes.

Same thing, yes ?

Boston was founded 400 years ago and has an extensive system of subways (since 1898), commuter trains (since 1830s!), streetcars (1897), and hundreds of bus routes (since early 1950s).

Boston Trolleys in 1898

All that infrastructure meant absolutely ZERO when incomes grew and suburbanization took over. It didn't matter even if there was a gold-plated bus stop in front of every home (when I lived in the city I had 8 bus routes within 400m of my front door). So harping on a lack of infrastructure in US cities is completely missing the big picture.

As I tried to explain to him yes modern cities in China are nice and certainly better than rough rural life. But we had our happy city phase starting in the 1890's and ending in the 1950's (60+ years). China has had a middle class and modern cities for what...30 years? In another 30 years he'll be singing a different song...and it will probably be similar to mine. He just can't see beyond his song.

To put it into perspective it would be like me saying "Oh nobody in China would be moving to the big cities if the rural areas simply had better transportation systems". That's just a complete oversimplification of the situation and it is not taking into account many other factors.

 

[Nasr]

Still far from your 54 negative rating by a huge margin.

I couldn't stop laughing!!!

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Yes.

...continued
One overlooked big factor may be a deep deep cultural one of being "independent" which doesn't fit well when sharing living spaces with others in big cities.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/a_man's_home_is_his_castle

For east Asians the opposite is generally true and dense cities suit their tastes perfectly
https://www.purpleculture.net/dictionary-details?word=热闹

The first 30 seconds of this video explains the roots of suburbanization far better than simply blaming mass transportation issues.

 

[jamahir]

For east Asians the opposite is generally true and dense cities suit their tastes perfectly

That's true even in South Asia and Iran. We must note the huge number of people felled by collapsing buildings in Kashmir, Gujarat, Nepal and Iran.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

That's true even in South Asia and Iran. We must note the huge number of people felled by collapsing buildings in Kashmir, Gujarat, Nepal and Iran.

It's not like we are completely averse of crowds. We just like it in moderation.

Just waiting in long lines is a HUGE HUGE stickler for most people. They won't tolerate it often. It's such a serious problem for places like DisneyWorld that they have to resort to basically giving people a reserve time for every ride. People literally go through the trouble of booking their ride times up to 60 days before they get into the park.

 

[jamahir]

1. Is the vid poster's profile-pic from the film A Clockwork Orange ?

2. Why did the person dive towards the end of the vid ?

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

1. Is the vid poster's profile-pic from the film A Clockwork Orange ?

2. Why did the person dive towards the end of the vid ?

1) Looks drawn...but possibly inspired.
2) Looks like a bungie cord jumper above the crowd. I'm pretty sure the bottom area is fenced.

That's true even in South Asia and Iran. We must note the huge number of people felled by collapsing buildings in Kashmir, Gujarat, Nepal and Iran.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1906_San_Francisco_earthquake
WAY over 3,000 people died. This really affected the country deeply and was looked at as a fault with this new city life "modernization" idea. Now for many countries 3,000 dead in an earthquake is not much...to the US it was basically unprecedented. Having 75 killed would be scandalous...over 3000 is just way beyond comprehension.

Even though since then the US has been rocked by many large earthquakes the deathtoll rarely goes over 50. Seeing thousands needlessly dead in city building collapses by an earthquake would be considered a complete societal failure.

 

[tower9]

Dubai won that race and the Middle East will likely maintain that lead in the near future.

 

[Yankee-stani]

Dubai won that race and the Middle East will likely maintain that lead in the near future.

way to kitschy to be honest esp when you have all those buildings built by cheap labor from South Asia

 

[tower9]

way to kitschy to be honest esp when you have all those buildings built by cheap labor from South Asia

Yeah but it's a big thing in the Middle East to host the tallest skyscraper. The US isn't building much anymore and China is limiting the heights of their new buildings so obviously the ME will dominate this list.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Beautiful.

Notice how in the US walls/fences around property and bars on windows are not needed. (Fences are however required around swimming pools for young children safety reasons)

Also notice the mailboxes on the edge of the street with no locks.

The US Postal people are in right hand drive trucks and just lean out the truck window and put it in the box.

packages are just left by the front door.

Does this sound like some super unsafe society? This is actually where developed countries could go after the urban phase.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

India and China have found new middle class affluence, however artificial it is. The area I live in here in India is not well-planned at all. 30 feet x 40 feet houses built very near each other and very close to the road. In the situation of earthquake my type of area will have many casualties because escape from the falling buildings will be difficult. I believe this is what happened in the Nepal earthquake of 2015.
Beautiful.

Well I think when middle class becomes more mainstream in China and India people like Beijingwalker will understand the idea of moving out of dense cities.

There are only a handful of American posters on here yet many of them are relatively well off (NOT mansion rich) and can afford things not usually mentioned by other posters.

One has a 30 foot boat that looks something like this

Others have had Tesla Model S's.
One had over $2M in the bank
A few of us have houses worth > $1M

Stepping into a high rise apartment with 100's of other people is just something we can afford to not have to do anymore. However 120 years ago we couldn't afford to move out and were stuck in them. We may have thought back then we had all achieved "middle class" (like Beijingwalker) and everybody had money to buy stuff..but really we didn't. It's another step in wealth before you can see what it brings. This came after WW2 in the 1950's after 60 years of city life (~1890's).

 

[Redbeanpaste]

Post Covid, people are going to spread out even more as remote working becomes the norm. Possibly only densely populated cities in Asia will need sky scrapers at all in 30 years.
The Middle East are building skyscrapers purely as a publicity stunt. That will stop when oil runs out and/or people stop being impressed by sky scrapers which ever comes first. It shouldn’t be about how tall your buildings are but how beautiful and interesting your urban spaces are.

 

[Figaro]

How America Lost the Skyscraper Race
The United States once dominated the race for the skies. Here's what happened.

America was never in the skyscraper race anyways after the 1950s. Something called the suburb came along, which imo is superior to really tall apartment complexes anyways. China needs to construct very tall skyscrapers because of the population density (4 times the population of the US and roughly the same size). The US does not suffer from this restriction.