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Comment by shadowofneptune | Hacker News Reader

I am surprised that this article did not mention the truest economic limit: the fact that the new tallest buildings in the world are often mostly empty. It took until the 1950s for the Empire State building to turn a profit. The Sears Tower's incredible volume was meant for an expanding Sears that never happened. It's a consistent pattern.

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Skyscrapers tend to start construction during an economic boom, but because they're so slow to build, by the time they're complete the boom has usually ended.

South-East Asia (Bangkok, Jakarta, KL etc) after the 1998 crisis was full of skyscrapers that were never even finished before the money ran out, the Burj Khalifa opened up just when Dubai's economy went into freefall, and Calgary is a recent example of skyscrapers being completed at exactly the wrong time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28873926

The Empire State Building was built just as the Great Depression was taking root, in 1930--31. That depression lasted until 1941 officially, and it wasn't until the post-war boom that commercial activity really began taking off. It's helpful to keep that in mind when looking at the history of the building.

Keep in mind too that the Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world for 40 years --- it held the title from 1930 until 1970 when the World Trade Center towers exceeded it. (The Empire State Building topped out in September, 1930, well before construction was comleted.) Conventional wisdom long held that supertowers were lagging economic indicators and foretold recessions. There's some truth to that.

1945–75 was 30 years of uninterrupted growth. A very interesting coincidence that the WTC was built then of all times.

My understanding is that the newer residential super-slender residential towers in New York are largely unoccupied, even though their units have been sold. Buyers are using them as investments.

These particular towers are the architectural equivalent of cryptocurrency: valuable solely for their wastefulness.

It mentions that the the current tallest building is empty in the top 29%

Slightly different because the Burj is empty by design, while the other examples were empty due to market forces

I believe that's different. The top 29% of the Burj Khalifa is unusable by design -- its only purpose is to make the building taller.

I believe the OP's point is that when usable space in a building goes unleased, it makes it hard for the investor to turn a profit. Therefore there is no economic incentive to build a taller building.

I find this argument a bit hard to understand for another reason, though. If there is no demand for space, then why does anyone construct new buildings, and why is rent so high in places like NYC? It seems to me like there is actually incredible demand for space in dense cities.

Many skyscrapers are novel- there is a certain prestige, and thus premium- to having an office in the Sears tower or the Burj Khalifa.

That is added on to the fact that skyscrapers are also engineering marvels, and the cost per unit goes up quite a bit once you have to start dealing with those problems, compared to the much more standard 6 story building as an example.

An additional novelty factor is that actually supporting the weight of the tower will require different techniques (and significantly higher costs) depending on the type of land the desired build site happens to be on.

All of these things create something of a price floor for rents.

Agreed. There's a demand for skyscrapers, just not the tallest skyscraper.

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