Also, the "cities" are poorly defined. Tangerang is a suburb of Jakarta and should be counted as such, while Mandaluyong is in Manila. I suspect the same applies to a number of those Chinese cities.
For example, somehow one of the largest cities in the world, São Paulo, didn't even make the list despite having an outrageous number of tall buildings: http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/2169111.jpg
Where's Tokyo? Hong Kong? I'm confused why these were omitted.
The graphs are for new completions, which almost by definition favours developing countries. Evidently Tokyo and HK didn't complete any 200m+ buildings in 2015. And while São Paulo has a very impressive concentration of tall buildings, it has zero above 200m.
I agree about 200m+ buildings being a strange metric, though. For all intents and purposes there's little difference, from an urban dynamics perspective, between 150m and 200m construction.
I'm really confused as to why they'd pick this particular metric. Later on in the article they talk about density patterns which is a much better predictor of health.
150 meters
= 45 floors
@ 10 feet / story
If the horizon crests at ~25 miles at sea level here on earth, what's the distance from which it can be seen. I think that's a relevant measure for the effect of a building on its surrounding community.
Though your measure of effect on the surrounding community wouldn't really apply here as the buildings aren't that tall when compared to surrounding mountains.
Anything else requires some napkin math about the circumfrence of the earth and radial offsets for non-sea-level terrain, combine with a bit of triangulation, to estimate skyline impact. Then, heaped on top is the effects of local topography contours and relative relationships with other human structures.
No it's not? It's true that the cities are basically connected by urban sprawl, but administratively it's definitely a separate entity.
A case could be made that it's part of Greater Jakarta but that's a pandora's box of definitions and interpretations...