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The world got a lot taller in 2017. The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat has released the '2017 Tall Building Year in Review', a comprehensive report cataloguing the skyscrapers above 200 metres in height that were completed since January. According to CTBUH, 144 new buildings met that threshold, representing the fourth consecutive record-breaking year for worldwide skyscraper construction.
The staggering number marks a 95 percent jump from 2013, when only 74 buildings of more than 200 metres were completed. The geographic spread of skyscrapers is also growing more diverse — 69 cities across 23 countries recorded 200-metre-plus completions, compared to 54 cities across 18 countries in 2016. Of those, 28 cities and eight countries constructed their tallest buildings this year.
Not surprisingly, China dominated the rankings. With 76 completions, the world's most populous country was the site of 53 percent of 2017's new skyscrapers. Though the number is a dip from the 83 recorded last year, China still blows its competition out of the water. Shenzhen alone witnessed 12 tall building completions, snatching 8.3 percent of the year's total. To put things in perspective, that's more new skyscrapers than any other city or country, other than China. With ten completions, the United States came in a distant second.
The study suggests the world is growing more comfortable with working and living in the sky. "The data from 2017 shows a continuation of the trend towards a greater global proliferation of skyscraper construction," said CTBUH executive director Antony Wood. "Highrise construction is no longer confined to a select few financial and business centres, but rather is becoming the accepted global model for densification as more than one million people on our planet urbanize each week."
CTBUH's findings also show a shift from all-office and mixed-use developments towards all-residential skyscrapers. There were 49 all-residential completions this year, taking a 34 percent slice of the pie, and representing an increase from just 19 completions last year. All-office completions dove to 56 completions from 67, dropping from a 52 percent share to a 39 percent share of the total.
Two new supertall skyscrapers also bumped out Kuala Lumpur's iconic Petronas Towers from the top ten tallest buildings in the world. Shenzhen's 599-metre-tall Ping An Finance Center and Seoul's 554-metre-tall Lotte World Tower are now the fourth and fifth tallest towers on the planet. They join a worldwide total of 126 supertall buildings, up 13.5 percent from 2016, and a whopping 385 percent since 2000, when only 26 supertalls were built. There are now 1,319 buildings over 200 metres tall around the world, a rise of 402 percent from the 263 recorded in 2000.
The web report and infographics can be viewed in full here.
