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http://www.emporis.com/statistics/most-skyscraper-cities-worldwide

emporis defines a skyscraper as a building over 100 meters. i'm counting at least 45 skyscrapers proposed or under construction in toronto right now, but i may be undercounting, possibly by a lot. with how tight the rental market is right now, it doesn't look like the current boom will end before 2017.

chicago has 15 skyscrapers under construction or in advanced pre-build.

1 Hong Kong 1,268
2 New York City 677
3 Tokyo 411
4 Chicago 299
5 Shanghai 256
6 Dubai 248
7 Toronto 228

what do people think? my guess is that chicago is up to 315 skyscrapers by 2018 and toronto is up to 275 but what do others think?

obviously, this isn't the measure of a city, chicago will always be chicago and toronto is sort of still finding its personality but settling into something we can all sort of anticipate. i have to say though that having the world's number three skyscraper count would be something as a child of the late 1980s and 1990s i'd never have expected out of toronto.
 
You undercounted by a lot. I counted 95 skyscrapers under construction or in pre-construction on Urban Toronto's DataBase.

It won't be very long before Toronto surpasses Chicago. I'd say 5 years at most.
 
The economy in the U.S. is heating up too so we may start to see more skyscraper announcements for Chicago?
 
We shouldn't trust those numbers too much.
I visit Shanghai every year and there is no way Shanghai only has 28 more buildings over 100m than Toronto. It must be very outdated. Only 256 buildings over 100m/about 35 stories tall in that massive city with 24 million people where practically everyone lives in a high rise? That's impossible. Note that Shanghai is unlike NYC where many people still get to live in 2-3 story homes.

I am not sure if it appropriate to post a non-English link here, but the Chinese source says Shanghai has 6,000 buildings over 24 meters, and almost 1,000 above 100 meters. Even this is a bit outdated as it is written when Shanghai Centre was still under construction
http://www.baike.com/wiki/上海高楼
 
Hong Kong's numbers are crazy. Two times as many skyscrapers as New York. Damn. I really need to visit there, it looks like an amazing city.

1920px-Hong_Kong_Night_Skyline.jpg
 
I would highly recommend visiting if you got a chance - it's an experience in hyperdensity, though sights like the one in the pic can be hard to get (pollution and all). That's an old pic btw - ICC isn't halfway to completion yet.

AoD
 
I'm in shangahi right now and am completely unimpressed. The more I travel the more I think cities built on grids with short distances between intersections is the right way to go. The financial distric has the worst walking areas of this city and the best part of the city is the older part called the french consession with many shops and walkability. Too many towers Ina park here as crazy as that is. No wonder people love new York.
 
Speaking of Shanghai, even metro stations under construction can be guesswork at best!

I had to identify land parcels near Shanghai Metro stations for intensification as part of my work as a GIS specialist for a GIS consulting firm on the behalf of the World Bank.
 
I'm in shangahi right now and am completely unimpressed. The more I travel the more I think cities built on grids with short distances between intersections is the right way to go. The financial distric has the worst walking areas of this city and the best part of the city is the older part called the french consession with many shops and walkability. Too many towers Ina park here as crazy as that is. No wonder people love new York.

I completely agree.
The old town Shanghai is actually the best part, although less glamorous. The irony is that while North American cities are doing everything they can to increase downtown density, Shanghai has been consistently decreasing that (because it is too high: central Shanghai has 1.5X the density of Paris, 3.6M on 120sq km) and relocate millions of people to the outlaying areas. One thing I particularly dislike is the newly developed areas are becoming increasingly car friendly, with extra wide 8/10 lane boulevards taking pedestrians almost a minute just to cross it, and people seem to be proud of it as if that means "modern". While people in Toronto boast about car-less life, the Shanghainese can't wait to buy their first car, although they don't really need it as everyone seems to be within walking distance to a subway station nowadays.

As to the financial district, I am sure you are talking about Lujiazui in Pudong, which looks impressive but I don't like it because it is so sterile. It is more like Toronto's southcore, with many highrises (much higher of course) and green spaces but totally unlivable. Note that Shanghai has several other central business districts on the older part of the city which are a lot more walkable and vibrant, and they are more like Yonge/Dundas and King West area with restaurants, eateries and shops everywhere rather than our highly sterile financial district with practically nothing but office buildings and foodcourt (Path shops, I don't think highly of them).

Honestly I don't know why we have to design our Fidi that way. Does it have to be like that? Why can't we have busy retail along King, Wellington and Bay on the street level and therefore making it a livable part of the city? I don't think serving as the office district excludes the possibility of that. I also hope southcore will have more retail too, not just at the base of each condo/office building, but along the streets.

Regarding HK, yes, it "looks" like an amazing city, but living there is a different story. Don't romanticize it. Yes, the upscale million $ condos and office towers by the bay are beautiful, but most people don't live there. They live like this:

adsc_6562a.jpg


Tower+Block+1.jpg
 
Regarding HK, yes, it "looks" like an amazing city, but living there is a different story. Don't romanticize it. Yes, the upscale million $ condos and office towers by the bay are beautiful, but most people don't live there. They live like this:

The even bigger shocker is that it is seen as a better way to live - literally in the Corbusian/Radiant City sense of argument (greenery, open space, mass produced efficiency). There is raging debate of sorts in Hong Kong about the wisdom of development (and more significantly, redevelopment) along said patterns. They are about a generation behind the anti-modern planning blacklash experienced in the North American context, and I expect there will be a similar retrospection in China.

AoD
 
The even bigger shocker is that it is seen as a better way to live - literally in the Corbusian/Radiant City sense of argument (greenery, open space, mass produced efficiency). There is raging debate of sorts in Hong Kong about the wisdom of development (and more significantly, redevelopment) along said patterns. They are about a generation behind the anti-modern planning blacklash experienced in the North American context, and I expect there will be a similar retrospection in China.

AoD

The high price in HK is purely man made problem. The problem stems from small and piece meal land supply to guarantee high prices and profits for the developers. The largest 10 developers in HK control over 90% of land supply, so it is in their best interest to collaborate with the government to make sure land is always scarce and price is artificially high.

Yes, everyone knows HK is small but has 7 million people, but the reality is HK is not that small. So far, only 7% of HK's land is developed. If you take a satellite view of HK map, the vast majority is green space. There are some mountainous areas but much of land can be developed for housing. Even additional 1% more land supply means housing for 1 million more people in the same density is maintained. On the other hand, if the government allowed 10% land to developed instead of 7%, that would have doubled land supply and reduce land price and made the city a lot more affordable. 15% would make things even better. Unfortunately the HK economy is dominated by a bunch of large developers who won't want that to happen, which is why HK with half the GDP per capital of NYC has a much higher property price and everyone except the few ultra rich is squeezed in tiny apartments with no sunlight. The middle class and particularly the young people suffer the greatest. Price land/property price is essentially an invisible tax that enables HK to have such a low income and corporate tax.

in the 1980/1990, the Shanghainese were known to live in extra tiny apartments too, but things have changed because the market was liberalized and supply has gone by substantially. Today each Shanghainese lives on an average space of about 300sf, about 3 times the 1985 level. (Housing bubble and affordability is a serious problem as well, which I can't explain).
 

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