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Comment by sparrc | Hacker News Reader

I feel the author sort of invalidates his own argument with this sentence (also he forgot to mention commercial space travel):

> "What about all the cool new stuff?" you might ask. What about the recent breakthroughs in mRNA technology? What about CRISPR, and AI, and solar energy, and battery technology, and electric vehicles, and (sure) crypto, and (yes!) smartphones?

His defense of his thesis after this sentence doesn't make that much sense to me. Sure some things have "stagnated". Skyscrapers aren't really getting any taller, but why do we need even taller skyscrapers? Haven't we maybe simply reached the physical limits of gravity?

As for institutions, if we already have CMU and Stanford and MIT, why do we need more top-tier private universities? It seems to me we're seeing pubic universities become more prestigious and influential, which IMO is largely a positive development (UW, Cal, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, etc).

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For skyscrapers, what we've reached is the practical limit of interior space. You can't usefully add more floors because you consume that much space on the lower floors for more elevator shafts, support columns, and other infrastructure. It becomes more economically practical to build that space into another building instead.

There's a reason that most Manhattan skyscrapers range around 30 to 50 floors. Anything over that is mostly a stunt for visibility and publicity, not economic practicality. The main thing you gain from being taller is a tourist observation deck, but there's only going to be demand for a few of those per city.

exactly. the costs go up as floors increase.

Construction costs increase exponentially going into the sky and also into the ground. Costs can be recouped via condo/office sales/rents. The height/depth vs cost line has to intersect with the line of economic activity. That's why the most prosperous cities can command the highest towers. And that's why Midtown NY has most of the new tall buildings - that's where dynamism is, not Downtown, which is a little outpost of Midtown at this point. For example, the Bank of America HQ is in midtown, not on Wall Street, in downtown NYC.

It also has to do with the land itself. In our area we can't build tall buildings simply because it's all clay here. It's not very feasible.

On the skyscraper point, at least in Chicago (I'd guess) and Seattle (where I live, so I'm sure), the limits on skyscraper height aren't about anything to do with the buildings themselves, the soil conditions, or anything like that. The issue is being to close to flight corridors, and so the FAA won't approve anything higher.

On the University point, I think I agree in theory, but not in practice. The percentage of their funding that's actually coming from the state has been dropping significantly over time. They're essentially private in everything but name and some slight discounts for in-state students. The demographics aren't that much different from similarly situated private universities. My sister went to a public school, which ended up costing more than my private school due to the scholarship I was able to get at the private university (I wasn't even that special, approximately 50% of the kids there got this scholarship).

If you go to UW, you have to apply to the CS program your freshman year. There's no guarantee you'll get in, due to space constraints. It's completely f'ed.

Some places (Portland I think) deliberately limit the height of buildings so you don't feel like you're in a prison when walking around.

That describes almost every american city.

Feeling like you're in a prison is entirely due to the street level design of the buildings, which to be fair, a lot of American cities are god awful at. The difference between walking by a 15 story building and a 100 story building is minuscule.

Yeah, every time I get back from a trip to mid-town Manhattan, I end up realizing after the fact that I was just a block or two from the Empire State Building, but had no idea because it looks just like every other building from ground level. From NJ or Brooklyn, the Empire State looks like this incredible thing. From Madison Square Garden, it looks like a Marriot.

> They're essentially private in everything but name and some slight discounts for in-state students.

I'm not sure >$20k/yr is a slight discount.

I certainly agree that UW should expand it's CS program even more. FWIW, they are doing it but probably not quickly enough:

- https://housedemocrats.wa.gov/hansen/2018/02/26/house-budget...

- https://www.cs.washington.edu/supportcse/building

I'd have to disagree on the "slight discount" argument. UW charges $12,000 per year for residents. This is 3.2x cheaper than non-resident tuition ($39,000). IMO $12,000 is still a very good value for what you get.

I wasn't aware UW was still that cheap for residents. That's great. I'm more familiar with the northeast. For example, the in state all-in price for Rutgers these days is $30k.

Chicago has no building limitations due to the FAA.

The FAA is federal and the law requiring notice of construction applies in the entire United States. Any structure taller than 499 feet requires FAA involvement. 14 CFR Part 77.

Notification is not involvement. You have to tell the FAA. They can say "hey, that's going to be an issue". But you can build a 10,000 foot building in downtown Chicago without any issues.

An FAA determination of hazard to air navigation is indeed technically advisory but it has enormous practical effect. Nobody will finance or insure a project with such a determination. I'm aware of one case where a project received a hazard determination and the property owner sued the FAA because the effect of the determination was that they couldn't build--and not because of any zoning or permitting laws referencing the FAA, but because nobody wanted to be involved once the FAA declared the project dangerous. The FAA won and the project was never built.

Buildings in downtown San Jose, CA are limited to about 15 storeys due to the nearby SJC airport. In practice though that's not a major obstacle to development; most buildings there are still significantly shorter.

Height aside, I live in NYC and once all the cleanup and insurance claims and lawsuits were settled, the new 1 WTC was built just unbelievably fast. There was just a deep, sad hole for a few years, then they finally broke ground, starting construction and the building was 100 stories and open for occupancy in less than 5 years. The rate was about 1 floor per week once they got above ground.

A similarly sized building, the Empire State Building, was built in 1930-1931 in 13 months. Of course it was the depression, so when it was ready for occupancy they had a hard time finding tenets.

The skyscraper point is tremendously silly. Sure, the max height has slowed it's march (though not stopped!), but far more supertall towers have been erected since 2001, than had been previously. This is because of cost decrease and technology improvements. (As an aside, a lot of this is owed to work resulting from the 9/11 attacks).

You thinking his question was “why don’t we have taller skyscrapers” kind of demonstrates his actual point that we just seem to assume incremental improvements. His question would be “where is the next disruptive innovation in work/life housing, like skyscrapers were?”

The next disruptive innovation in work/life housing is technologies that enable remote work for many employees. This greatly reduces the need for dense housing and office space. All else being equal, the majority of people prefer to live in single family houses with some space and privacy rather than being crammed into skyscrapers. (Yes I understand that some prefer the skyscraper lifestyle but they're a minority.)

Skyscrapers are so difficult and expensive that corporations with tens of billions are the only plausible developers. With wfh and offshoring, commercial real estate is a difficult space to make profitable - nobody wants to go to congested city centers to work, so nobody wants to risk catering to a dwindling population when the margins on other locations and building styles make so much more sense.

Yeah, this article seems like a pining for ye olden days of the industrial revolution rather than a substantive assessment of current innovation. I agree with some of the opinions stated, but holistically I don't buy what the article is selling.

Agree. I think science fiction had completely warped the lay person's mind about technological progress. They've already seen examples of future tech functioning in media and have an idyllic view of what it should be.

I hope you meant "public universities" :)

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