Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by jariel | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

jariel

??? NYC is full of skyscrapers.

It may not have 'ultra high' buildings, but those exist for different reasons and the economics are different.

SF has earthquakes and a shifty foundation which is material.

View on HN

> SF has earthquakes and a shifty foundation which is material.

Maybe I am misunderstanding your post? Skyscrapers are possible in SF. The Salesforce tower is 1,070 feet tall. They did have to go down 300 feet to anchor to bedrock, though.

The right explanation for New York might be that what the "already wealthy people who choose to live in New York the way it is" already expressed their preference, and it's for a city full of skyscrapers.

The theory makes some sense if you have a wealthy city that's remained stubbornly low-rise (Paris?). But if you love NYC you probably like the skyscrapers, rather than viewing them as a necessary evil.

Empire State Building for example, was built in 1930 and finished a year or so later. NYC predates the nimby movement but not the industrial revolution.

Right, my claim is that NYC will not get many more tall towers. It's settling down into a state where there will be few more.

I believe your hypothesis is not entirely correct. 9 of the 10 tallest buildings in NYC are to be completed between 2000 and 2021.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_N...

In Europe, if you exclude Russia from the top 20 tallest buildings, the UK (2), Germany (2) and Spain (2) have the tallest buildings, with the UK and Spain buildings built in the 2000s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_E...

Welp! Thank you! Boy am I glad no one fleeced me on the bet, eh?

You have a refreshing way of accepting when you are wrong, it is a joy to witness on these here pipes.

New York City has built 50 new skyscrapers in the last 5 years.[1] Including 432 Park Avenue, taller than the Empire State Building. It's an apartment building. Modeled after a trash can.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_N...

I like 432 Park Ave! It looks very cool, in my opinion, like a rendering error. The 50 new skyscrapers does directly falsify my idea, though. Let me quickly edit so I don't get taken for a ride on the bet.

Only a small part of nyc has skyscrapers.

It may no longer be true, but it used to be that one could map the underlying geology via the bioturbation, observing the skyline: the part of Manhattan with skyscrapers was the part with near-surface bedrock.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com