New Manhattan Tower Is Now the Tallest

Meh, I disagree that "the tallest" somehow represents human progress. Heck, the whole point of this article is how the tower is completely incongruent with the rest of its surroundings, and there was a good comment about how much of this super-luxury real estate is essentially an export product that NY sells to foreign oligarchs.

Maybe a sign of maturity over hubris ?

I agree and I disagree. I agree that it is disappointing New York waited so long to change its zoning laws to allow/encourage development - a huge, growing city like NYC needs more housing to remain affordable (ahem, San Francisco). This is a great interactive feature from the nytimes on how Mayor Bloomberg really kickstarted the development boom of the 2000s: http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2013/08/18/reshaping-new...

On the other hand, tallest building is a terrible metric for progress. Buildings get exponentially more expensive as they get taller, leading to a less affordable city. These 104 units cost more than a billion dollars to develop, locking out all but the wealthiest people.

New York City has tons of underdeveloped but convenient land, like in Long Island City and Downtown Brooklyn. We should (and are) developing in those kinds of areas. A better metric of progress would be the number of people who can live in the city while keeping a sane commute.

I know that many New Yorkers will disagree, but it is possible that human progresses is not actually measured by the height of buildings in NYC.

Not sure why I was downvoted for pointing out that it isn't the tallest building in NYC. The tallest building in NYC is 1 WTC, which is almost 400' taller than this building, and is also the tallest building in the Western hemisphere.