For years in the western world. It was thought to be blasphemous to build
higher than the a church spire. The stories of the old testament warned against
reaching too close to the heavens. The builders of the tower of Babel declared:
“Come, let us build us a city and a tower with its top in the heavens. And let us make a name for ourselves, lest
we be scattered upon the face of the whole earth”
But god punished them for building a monument to humanity and not to God by confusing their
language so they could no longer work together. This story is used as the source of our world’s
languages for the religious and some still use it as an argument against our modern world,
but it has interesting undertones for the development of our cities. For centuries the church spire remained as
the focal point of most western cities. The Trinity Church was the largest building
in New York until 1890 when the New York World Building was completed. This marked an end to the Cathedral dominated
skylines of many cities across the world. Those church spires served as a symbol of
piety, but The New York World Building’s height allowed Joseph Pulitzer to expand his
growing business without having to find a large swath of land on the outskirts of the
city. Growing taller served a practical purpose
and it still does in many cases. It’s that demand for space that truly drives
up the average height of buildings in cities. Cities like Hong Kong do not have any supertall
buildings, but the average height of buildings in Hong Kong is among the highest in the world
and that is largely driven by the lack of space available. Hong Kong is confined by the sea on one side
and the Chinese border on the other while having a very mountainous landscape. There isn’t a huge amount of land to build
on. This forced buildings to grow taller to accommodate
the city's population. . When Hong Kong needed to expand their International
Airport there was little space available. Instead they decided to level two islands
outside the city to create a new artificial Island, where the new airport is now located. This project added 1% to the total surface
area of Hong Kong. When space is limited humans are forced to
get inventive to cope, but in many cities across the world space is not an issue and
these cities usually decide to expand outwards. This is called urban sprawl and it’s been
a topic of debate lately, with calls to stop this decentralisation of cities. Urban sprawl requires little micro-management
of resources, you simply continue to expand current utilities and roads and approve buildings
on cheaper undeveloped land. It’s an easy solution to a growing population,
but it creates many problems of it’s own and is completely unsustainable as populations
grow. You cannot simply keep expanding the city
and allowing those problems to escalate. It has huge environmental and social impacts. One of the most obvious, which my friend Wendover
Productions spoke about in his last video, was an increasing commute time. With an increasing city diameter the distances
we have to cover to reach the city centre increases and it is incredibly difficult to
serve all of these far flung suburban neighbourhoods with adequate public transport. This results in a city dependant on the car,
our least efficient form of transport. This not only has a social impact, as long
commute times are one of highest and most controllable factors that affect our happiness,
but The average American spends 17,600 minutes behind the wheel a year, much of that is spent
in gridlock traffic, that’s equivalent to spending almost an extra 37 days at your traditional
8 hour 9 to 5 job, but it also has a direct impact on pollution and air quality in the
city too. That’s 17,600 minutes of a car polluting
the environment. Reducing a city's dependence on cars reduces
our carbon footprint on this world. Urban sprawl affects our environment in other
ways too. Spreading our cities creates water distribution
problems. Here in Ireland it is thought that up to 50%
of the treated water is lost through pipe leakage and that problem is not unique to
Ireland. In 2010 it was reported that 3.3 billion litres
of water was being wasted in the England and Wales through pipe leakage. Reducing the sprawl reduces the length of
pipes needed and thus reduces the chances of leakages and the problem can be attenuated
further by creating buildings with self sustaining water supplies. This is becoming a growing trend and consideration
among engineers. LEED or Leadership in Energy and Environmental
Design is one of the most popular green building certifications used world wide. It rates how resource efficient buildings
are in their construction, energy use and water use. The Taipei 101 was awarded LEED’s highest
certification with a platinum certificate. It achieved this with it’s own dedicated
water management systems and low-flow water fixtures. This design ideology helped the Taipei 101
to decrease it’s potable water consumption by at least 30% compared to the average building
consumption, saving about 28 million liters of potable water annually. When you also consider that in America landscape
irrigation is estimated to account for nearly one third of all residential water use, totaling
nearly 9 billion gallons of water per day. It would be vastly more sustainable for a
world where water is in ever increasing demand to create cities where we have a larger percentage
of LEED certified high rise residential buildings. This goes beyond just environmental impacts,
there are a number of socio-economic motivations to creating more high rise buildings too. I pointed out that the urban sprawl results
in longer commutes and the roads and public transportation needed to facilitate those
commutes are not free. They need to be maintained and built with
your tax money and while building up is more costly, that cost and risk is usually incurred
on private contractors and the costs of building up starts to decline once you reach a certain
height. To build a skyscraper there are a number fixed
costs, but many of these costs do not increase with the height of the building. Fixed costs like the cost of land, legal fees
and design costs can be offset by building higher. If the building is built on a 100 square metre
plot of land and the building has 40 stories, each floor only takes up 2.5 square metres
of land. That has obvious economic advantages, especially
when you consider design and material costs only start to go up when you reach around
the 40th floor and that critical height is likely to go up as technology improves. Buildings like the Burj Khalifa may be just
exuberant displays of wealth, but they do serve as technology demonstrators. For 25 years the tallest building in the world
was the Sears Tower, now known as the Willis Tower. It uses a bundled tube structure, which maximises
the amount floor space, but if we scale this building to the size of the Burj Khalifa. It’s floor space would be dominated by structural
elements and the interior would have no natural light. As mentioned in my last video, the buttressed
core of the Burj Khalifa provides the structural integrity needed to reach these heights, while
maximizing both the window access and usable space. This is vital knowledge and experience to
have to allow building heights to keep growing while keeping costs down. So you may be thinking why aren’t there
more high rises buildings. If there are all these benefits there must
be reasons that we aren’t building more of them. We will learn why after this quick side note A lot of you have been admiring the footage
I use in my videos and a lot of it comes from Videoblocks.com, who have kindly sponsored
this video. Videoblocks has one of the largest stock video
libraries on the web with over 2 millions stock videos, after effects and motion backgrounds. With a videoblocks membership, you get access
to over 2 million clips for 40% off per clip compared to competitor sites and over 100,000
clips are included for free with your membership too. I get to use these videos with a 100% royalty
free agreement that means I can make money from my videos, which has allowed me to make
this channel my full time job, without worry of infringing on any copyrights. Membership is usually 149 dollars per year,
but videoblocks is offering an exclusive 50 dollar discount if you go to www.videoblocks.com/holidays
or click the link the description below. So they primary reason we aren’t building
higher is because of city planning and regulatory problems. Take New York’s growth in the early 20th
century as an example, building heights were growing and many were unhappy with it. At the time 5th Avenue was filled with stately
mansions, homes to the wealthy families of New York like the Carnegies and Rockefellers. They worried that unless building heights
were restricted, 5th avenue would turn into a dark cannon, overshadowed by these towering
behemoths. These worries led to 1916 zoning resolution
which allowed buildings to grow in height, but restricted their width as they grew. This is one of the primary reasons so many
buildings in New York built during that era taper towards their top. It was a measure to prevent buildings from
blocking the sunlight below, but the regulation had loop holes and architects quickly exploited
them. Between 1916 and 1960 the city’s zoning
code was amended 2500 times. The 1961 Zoning Resolution brought in strict
rules and introduced a new floor to area ratio rule that restricted buildings heights according
to the district they were. The floor to area ratio set how much floor
space could be built on a plot of land. A floor to area ratio of 2 means you can build
a 2 story building on your full plot or a 4 story building on half your plot. R1, R2 and R3 districts are low density zones
like Staten Island and the Jamaica Estates in Queens and they have a floor to area ratio
of 0.5. Where as major thoroughfares in Manhattan
are R9 and R10 districts which have floor to area ratios of 7.5 and 10 respectively. This floor to area ratio rule put pressure
on designers to allocate more space to open plazas or other public spaces around the building
to faciltate a taller tower, whereas the 1916 zoning laws resulted in tiered buildings that
started right on the sidewalk. The 1961 zoning code encouraged privately
owned public space to ease the density and claustrophobia of a high rise city and I think
we can all agree that is a move in the right direction. Zoning regulations like this are important
to prevent brainless growth that destroy a city’s character, but sometimes they are
overzealous and prevent modernisation altogether. Take Washington DCs zoning code that has been
in place for over 100 years with little change. The Height of Buildings act of 1910 prevents
any building beyond 40 metres in height. That is incredibly restrictive and it has
resulted in a city where the tallest structure is a giant stone obelisk and this thing. Even with a relatively small population, Washington
has some of the worst traffic in the US. A study released this year by INRIX found
that the people of Washington waste an average of 75 hours per year in traffic. That means their journeys take 75 hours more
than if there was no congestion. They were second only to Los Angeles, who
waste an average of 81 hours a year in traffic. LA is often singled out as the key example
of this problem of unchecked outward growth. It was a key theme in the movie “Her”,
where the car dominated urban sprawl of the present is juxtaposed with a vision of a glossy,
clean, high rise future for LA. The main character Theodore lives in a highly
developed downtown LA. He lives in a high rise building and works
in a high rise building. He’s able to walk between them and cars
seem to have ceased to exist,he instead uses the extensive metro system to get around. The movie even designed a futuristic subway
map of LA. To create this vision of the future, the producers
digitally enhanced the cities existing skyline. While also mixing in shots from present day
LA with numerous shots from Shanghai’s Pudong district, like this pedestrian sky bridge
which allowed Spike Jonze to film Theodore wandering through the urban jungle without
having the cars at street level interfering with the illusion of a city that has transcended
the need for personal transport. That transformative change seems implausible
and not likely in the near future, but cities can undergo metamorphosis when money and regulations
are not an issue. Take the mid-19th century renovation of Paris
as an example. Paris was once described by one of it’s
residents as “an immense workshop of putrefaction, where misery, pestilence and sickness work
in concert, where sunlight and air rarely penetrate. A terrible place where plants shrivel and
perish, and where, of seven small infants, four die during the course of the year.” This is an incredibly stark description of
Paris, when present day Paris is often fawned over for it’s wide boulevards, amazing architecture
and extensive public transport system. Paris of old was plagued with problems caused
by the outdated planning of it’s medieval past. Paris was in need of renovation and Napolean
III made it possible by giving the money and power needed to Baron Haussmann. He transformed these narrow streets and old
dilapidated buildings into spacious boulevards. (Rue de Rivoli) He revamped all of these streets in red and
created two new parks for the cities residents.Napolean III and Haussmann helped transform Paris into
the charming city of light that 16 million tourists now visit every year. But it may be time to start rethinking Paris’
city planning once again. The lack of housing in central Paris has caused
prices to raise so high that only the rich can afford it. Forcing the working class families of Paris
to the outskirts of the city. Creating huge disparity of wealth between
the centre and outskirts. This map shows the concentration of social
housing as a percentage of total residences, with the largest percentages being located
furthest from the city centre and even now these people are being forced further outside
the city limits as gentrification occurs. Paris is no stranger to revolts of the working
class with notable riots in 1968, 2006 and just this year Paris saw more riots as new
labour laws were passed giving employers more power to increase working hours, decrease
holidays and decrease pay. The lack of affordable housing compounds these
social problems and the main cause of these prices is Parisians unwillingness to build
over existing buildings. During Haussmann's renovation of paris height
restrictions on buildings were raised from 16.5 to 19 metres, but the transformation
of Paris took place in a time where elevators did not exist. In 1967 the height restrictions were lifted
and the Montparnasse Tower was constructed soon after. A building that is loathed by Parisians. It sticks out from the surrounded buildings
like a sour thumb. There is a fine line between progress and
regression. Paris renovated to rid itself of the claustrophobic
narrow streets of the past, building higher without thought will bring it right back to
that. The construction of this building resulted
in the height restriction being reduced to 25 metres for central Paris. France is a heavily regulated country and
when it’s rulers decide they don’t want change, change will not occur. But one part of Paris proves that modern high
rise buildings can be introduced without destroying the character of the city. La Défense is Europe’s largest purpose
built business district housing 180,000 daily workers. La Défense proves that skyscrapers can be
incorporated into the historic background of Paris without destroying it’s charm,
but La Défense is a financial district. It was built to create office space and houses
just 25,000 permanent residents. There is little motivation to build high rise
buildings to reduce housing prices as it is cheaper to push people to the outskirts of
the city. Paris is not alone in these problems, London
has been criticised for the same problems and Vice News made an excellent documentary
about the effects of this gentrification of working class neighbourhood. There is no easy way of balancing preservation
and growth, but we need to put our countries leaders under more pressure to consider this
and not just follow the cheap easy route, because the problems will only get worse as
our populations grow. If we allowed those height restrictions to
stop us from building on 5th Avenue, the world would have been deprived of iconic buildings
like the Empire State and Flat Iron Buildings. Great cities are not static, they constantly
change and move with the times. The greatest of our modern cities like New
York and Singapore function because their height enables a huge number of people to
work and live on a small piece of land. That is something our world is going to need
going forward as our populations continue to grow. Thanks for watch. You may have noticed this video is about twice
as long as my usual videos. I wanted to experiment a bit and see how longer
videos do on this channel so please let me know what you think in the comments or on
twitter and tell me a bit about your city and how you would like to see it change. I also want to take this time to thank my
patreon supporters properly, there are 154 of you supporting this channel on patreon
and that is insane. You have helped me buy a new laptop so I can
edit quicker, a new microphone to improve my audio among other things. I cannot thank you enough for supporting and
believing in this channel. It means the world to me. This month I have travelled to North Carolina
to spend time with my family and on the way I stopped in New York during the supermoon
and it really solidified my love for New York. Check out this quick clip I took while there.
Love it, need more like this posted and less politics and video game breakdowns
Very well explained video! The only thing I missed a bit was, that building higher is not in itself going to account for higher population density. For instance Barcelona and Philadelphia have roughly the same population of a bit over 1.5 million. Yet Philadelphia, with more than three times the land area (135.09mi²) has only a third of the population density despite it's tall buildings (which probably are offices anyway). I think a lot of it has to with zoning and, which might still proof the point of the video, the average height of the buildings might be higher in Barcelona. Check out the two cities in Google maps, the difference between the zoning in those cities is quit good visible.
Great video!
You should cross post this to r/engineering. I reckon they would enjoy it. If you're not fussed, let me know and I'll do it for you.
Very informative video. Learned quit a bit from this.
Didn't care for the paid advertisement in the middle of the video, but I get it.