Skyscrapers Are a Mistake | Hacker News Reader

Skyscrapers Are a Mistake

israel21c.org

There are some points in there but it's pretty blunt and full of strange assertive statements.

>Residential high-rises, too, are often fully glazed. Meir says all that glass serves no practical purpose (except possibly boosting curtain sales). Who wants thousands of passersby looking at them in their pajamas?

What, You can't see why people like big windows? I have floor to ceiling windows in my apartment and I love them. I have all my lights off and my living room and home office are super bright with incredible views. They have a mirror like coating which blocks the vast majority of heat and makes them mostly one way so I can walk around naked knowing it's basically impossible to see anything from the ground. The insulation of my apartment is superb so cooling uses minimal power. I run my air con all day every day and it uses far less power than I used to use conservatively using air con in the house I was in previously.

I agree that super tall 300m buildings are not strictly practical. They are a monument, which humans have always loved all throughout history. A more practical monument than the pyramids imo. My building is 100m tall and I feel that's roughly ideal. 3 elevators which is perfect and doesn't take up too much of the floor space.

I heard somewhere that 50 stories (so about 150m) is the tallest we can economically build, even on very valuable soil. Not sure why the bean counters allow architects to build higher...

Ozymandias can do whatever he wants!! He'll never die! Haha

Most of the super tall buildings are funded by the government. They symbolize success and make up a huge part of how people see a city. Similar to sports stadiums, they aren't economical on their own but they can be when placed in a wider city scale strategy.

> Most of the super tall buildings are funded by the government

This is complete and utter nonsense. You must be thinking of somewhere like Dubai? China? Nowhere in the western world is this true at all, let alone in “most” instances.

>They have a mirror like coating which blocks the vast majority of heat and makes them mostly one way so I can walk around naked knowing it's basically impossible to see anything from the ground.

Even without such coatings, no one can see inside your windows unless it's significantly brighter inside than outside. This is commonly known by anyone who watches police TV shows (the interrogation rooms take advantage of this effect, with very bright lights inside the room and the lights off in the observation room). So generally, no one can see in your window except at night. But even here, they'd need to be at a similar height in a neighboring building, or you'd have to be close to the ground and standing next to your window.

>My building is 100m tall and I feel that's roughly ideal.

I agree; too tall and there's too much space used for structure and elevators, and it takes too long to get to your floor. But a building like yours makes good use of the ground area with many dwellings.

Easy to say for someone who can afford to live in a single-family home in a desirable area (or, worse, get everyone else to fund roads for them). The article affects to worry about children having to ride a lift to go outside (the horror!), but those children are more likely to have somewhere to play - and someone to play with - nearby if we build densely.

The main point is a good one - we should be using better insulation and building techniques that can maintain the right temperatures in low-energy ways, and there's no point building balconies that can't actually be used. But density is needed, mechanical ventilation is not something to be feared in itself, and people like large windows and natural light.

> Easy to say for someone who can afford to live in a single-family home in a desirable area

Most of the points in TFA concern buildings much, much taller than most people who cannot "afford to live in a single-family home" would likely ever reside in.

Expanding on your point those large high density structures are incredibly energy efficient. Apartments and condos usually only have a single exterior wall, even full floor units share floors and ceilings with other units. Adding in economies of scale for some buildings with shared utilities such as hot water or merely the infrastructure connecting that building to the rest of the world (plumbing, wiring, roads) and you are blowing past a single family residential unit could ever hope to achieve.

The article directly addresses this, mentioning the high AC costs that make them significantly less energy efficient than their neighbors. There's a lot to be said for economies of scale and other aspects of denser housing, but at the very tall end that the article talks about there are also diseconomies of scale.

ETA, for the folks in the peanut gallery: do you suppose that those AC costs allow a 100-story high-rise to be more energy efficient than a 15-story neighbor? Have you seen what kind of electrical (and other) infrastructure has to go into such a building, to make them workable at all? None of which is necessary in more modestly sized structures. These issues have relevance beyond just comparing at similar heights.

The example compared a glass-facade skyscraper with another skyscraper with an opaque (concrete?) facade. Height was not part of the discussion in that particular case.

A 100 story tower needs to be compared against 6x15-story towers in terms of efficiency.

What are the dis-economies of scale that apply to 100x story towers, but not 6x 15 story towers?

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The article discusses water pumping and sewage. But only water pumps seem to be inefficient (more power to pump water to floor 100 than to pump water 6x15 floors).

Sewage benefits from oversized pipes. 6x sewage pipes are less efficient than one big pipe.

Discussion of recycled grey water or even sewage recycling 'in the skyscraper' makes more sense with 100 floors rather than 15 floors.

It's probably cheaper to have one big water recycling plant in the 100 story tower, rather than 6x water conditioning centers in 6x different towers.

"Either high-rise or single-family sprawl" is a false dichotomy. Even OP allows for up to 15 stories. If you want to learn more about the "missing middle" kinds of housing that would serve most people best, I suggest browsing around here:

https://missingmiddlehousing.com

> but those children are more likely to have somewhere to play - and someone to play with - nearby if we build densely.

Exactly. I live in a mid-rise building in Tokyo and there's huge parks on two sides where children can play, and lots of other kids in the building to play with, all just a few minutes' walk away. No one minds taking an elevator.

I'm glad to see that the meat of the article is about mundane glass issues (cost of glass, environmental effects, etc. etc.), and seems to have a reasonable discussion here.

But the headline is... a clickbaity mistake.

This article is all over the place. Skyscrapers are one thing, but your run-of-the-mill residential (not-so-)highrise is not one, and every study I've ever seen indicates that it's environmentally much more friendly to live in high-density housing: less heating/cooling costs that a single-family home (yes, even with those glass windows), cheaper construction and maintenance, less transport externalities, etc etc.

An apartment with heat exchange towards the outside through one wall is worse insulated than a single family home with all four walls plus roof and floor leaking heat? Color me extremely skeptical.

I honestly suspect the entire urban planning profession was a mistake.

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