Why doesn't China love skyscrapers anymore?

china loves skyscrapers it's built more in the past 30 years than america did throughout the entire 20th century if you look up the top 10 tallest buildings in the world half of them are on the chinese mainland shanghai has been a prime example of such fascination when the country embraced reform and opening up in 1979 business with the outside world grew and china needed to attract global companies and investors so in 1990 it decided to develop this patch of land in shanghai into a new economic icon people would want to build higher because they wanted their city to be more prestigious than another city this is marshall strabala the chief architect for this building the shanghai tower since the dawn of civilization height has been synonymous with power and stability a little bit of nationalistic pride most people didn't know where dubai was until they built the burj khalifa but there won't be another shanghai-style skyscraper boom in china anymore in april the country announced it will stop greenlighting new projects taller than 500 meters when i heard that i said wow and china will also strictly vet projects over 250 meters tall well i thought about it and i said you know it's a pretty intelligent thing to do because while skyscrapers can be good for image they are also expensive to build operating costs are high they pose challenges for fire safety and overall they just aren't very cost effective to go from 500 to 600 this incremental cost is exponential these buildings cost almost three times as much per square footage as a 20-story building tall buildings are also vulnerable to economic shocks since planning and building them can take years 10 years is not uncommon for these large buildings a project could start at the peak of an economic boom but end up plunging investors into debt but still throughout the world there are those who are willing to sacrifice finances in the pursuit of superlatives the tallest twin towers the tallest occupied single-use office tower the tallest residential building the tallest left-handed blue shaped oval building it's getting kind of ridiculous enter buildings with spires if i put moose in my hair and my hair sticks up am i taller here's an example in the 1920s builders in new york were competing to build the world's tallest building the battle was on between the chrysler building and the manhattan company building so the chrysler architect secretly built a spire hidden inside the building during construction which he then revealed in october 1929 that made the building the tallest in the world despite the spire serving no practical purpose whatsoever the stock market crashed the next day but hey spires became the new fashion that's the architect himself by the way [Music] when my old boss adrian was doing jin mao there was a discussion because the patronus towers finished about the same time so the jin mao client said well could we make jin mao taller by putting a spire on the top of the building and our answer is yes of course you can do that and they did drawings and renderings and everybody kind of said yeah it doesn't look as good let's kind of keep it where it is it looks better at that height which is a very powerful thing for someone to do that's not an easy decision to make we could be the world's tallest building if we do this but we're going to focus on what's right for our city in the 21st century the human desire for height remains unchanged and the main battleground for the skyline has moved to china in 2018 143 buildings over 200 meters were built globally and more than 60 percent of these were in china but our chinese cities especially lower tier ones so desperately in need of new office space that the only option is up into the sky data shows the average vacancy rate for offices across 17 major chinese cities reached more than 20 percent last year therefore more and more people suggest that china rethink its skyscraper boom for some citizens and professionals there's a cultural aspect to the issue as well here's their case the generic skyscraper make many cities look like photocopies of each other and stand as missed opportunities to amplify the local culture i think the cities need to look at their city and say our city is beautiful it doesn't need this spire sticking up to show off how successful we are you're here talking to me about tall buildings so i think that question should be put back on you do you find tall buildings that interesting or do you find them kind of wasteful or how do you feel about them

Channel: CGTN

Views: 1,103,527

Keywords: CGTN, News

Id: bVklyKOhksI

Length: 5min 38sec (338 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 09 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Patrickgulf1984]

cost too much with little use.

[u/ReveredApe]

In city centres you'll see all kinds of fancy skyscrapers but go to the surrounding districts and you'll see copy and paste apartment buildings everywhere.