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Comment by sema4hacker | Hacker News Reader

San Francisco also has a well-known hi-rise disaster. You would think that after decades of the USA building skyscrapers that new construction would be a slam dunk.

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The US still biulds skyscrapers? From what i have read, the vast majority in recent decades have been biult in china, on the order of 20x as many biulds. And outside of a couple cities like NYC and SF, sky scrapers are rare in the US. Per population, canada and australia have nearly twice as many. It is therefore no great suprise that American firms are no longer leaders in the field.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_the_mos...

It only makes sense in dense areas. I work in the high rise electrical industry, and it's like 7 cities here if that matters to anyone. I'm exclusively NYC based, but it's nice to know where you can buy parts from.

A different country with 3.5x the population building a majority of skyscrapers, doesn't mean that the US doesn't build skyscrapers.

The three countries you mention build skyscrapers in far more densely populated areas. Canada and Australia may be huge, but they are mostly empty and all the population congregates in a tiny fraction of the land area. The US is more more evenly populated by comparison.

The thing to compare here, which might be tricky to get numbers on, is skyscrapers per local population density.

Even in San Francisco, it has everything to do with artificial goofy zoning. It's not like the city lacks the space to spread out. (NYC also - but less so.)

The city of Chicago which claims to have invented the skyscraper is hurt by not being listed right after NYC, where it has the second most skyscrapers.

And ironically, San Francisco's "Billionaire's Row" (Pacific Heights) is the exact opposite of NYC's, being mostly old single family homes far away from the core of the city.

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