Hacker News Reader

Comment by pmoriarty | Hacker News Reader

They could always build down, or up, or just reclaim more land from the sea.

I'd be more worried about completely land-locked countries, or ones who (unlike the Netherlands) don't have experience reclaiming land from the sea.

View on HN

The sea is pretty effectively reclaiming land back from them at this point. It's not a winning battle these days. It's also not so simple to build Manhattan style buildings on a sandpit

There is no logic to your claim at all. It is simply an engineering problem.

The problem is natural disasters and catastrophes can beat human engineering most of the time.

I'm curious which lost land you are referring to.

Building skyscrapers on former swamps is indeed difficult.

Sadly there's a huge resistance from the population and local municipalities to build high-rises. The municipalities usually have some rule that no building can be taller that the the old clock tower that virtually every town and city in the Netherlands have, this limits building height to about 70 meters. Then there's those people who will live in the shadow for 30 minutes and complain that this lowers their house price since they get less sunshine on their balconies or terraces. Then you have a faction that want every new building to look like a traditional building (2-3 stories tall made of bricks). Then there's the fact that towns and cities are very old, so you have these people who want to preserve the look at all cost.

Skyscrapers don't have to be built in the old town. There are huge tulip fields in NL that could be converted to living space, if so desired... to small buildings even, if tall ones were a problem.

I know and this is often the case, but the height limit still applies in the whole county, even 5 miles from the city center.

However at least my local city council has understood that taller buildings is the way to go.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com