2011
Marked by Influx of Beta Cities New to Top 25
A subsequent investigation determined that many of the most respected websites and hard-copy sources publishing skyscraper and other building information had incorrect information, which was often repeated by different sources, or published data in an inconsistent manner.
2011 turned out, to our own surprise, to have the most radical changes in the Ultrapolis World’s Twenty-Five Tallest Cities rankings since we started the survey; and we confidently say that in no other year since skyscrapers started being built at the end of the 19th century in the United States, has there been such a change in the statuses of the world’s tallest cities, or so many records being broken in so many different urban areas. For a century New York City stood as the world’s tallest city by a wide margin, with its fellow American cities of Chicago, Houston, and Los Angeles reigning alongside it for decades in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th places respectively, and American cities dominated the top for just as long. In the 1990’s we started seeing the first signs of the disturbance of that order, which was then largely overturned in the first decade of the 21st century.
In order to rank skyline heights, several methods were reviewed, and the following one was determined to reflect most closely what one would see with the naked eye if the city skylines were placed against each other; that is, which would appear taller. Most methods yielded similar results.
For each city, a review of the tallest 25-30 buildings is conducted, depending on the level of new construction, to determine which buildings are new and which are complete, and to verify in which year they can start being ranked. Because some buildings will rank differently depending on the inclusion of their spire, some buildings may not be included in one calculated score of its city's top ten, but are included in another. This also occurs when including towers. To track any corrections to height information, and prevent duplication of data for the same building, alternative building names are tracked for each city's top 30.
The New
Members of the Top 25
The
cities that pushed their way into the Ultrapolis World’s Twenty-Five
Tallest Cities, in rank order, are: Busan, South Korea; Abu Dhabi,
U.A.E.; Panama City, Panama; Kuwait City, Kuwait; and Doha, Qatar. None of these were among the top 25 last year, and just ten years
ago would not have been among the top 100. Busan made the most
stunning gain, moving up to tenth place from a position far too low
last year to accurately place (below 50th), and pushing Houston out
of the top ten for the first time since the 1970’s (Houston was 3rd at
its highest rank in the mid-1980’s and early 1990’s). Meanwhile,
Panama City, which completed the most 200-meter-plus buildings in
2011 (ten), moved from 33rd in 2010 to 16th, just above Los Angeles,
and way above all the biggest metropolises of Latin America, becoming
the first and only Latin American city to make the top 25.
In ranking, categories became apparent, thus the tiers. Tier 1 are those five cities with skylines significantly higher than all others. The sub-categories of A and B note the clumping of the scores with Tier 1B cities' composite scores closely clump around 950-1000 in 2011, while both 1A cities have notably higher scores, currently above 1030. Tier 2 cities' scores are significantly lower than the five Tier 1 cities, and, between 2000 and 2007,closely clumped between 700 and 810. Between 2000 and 2007,Tier 3 are those below 700. For 2008-2011, the 730 is the new minimum score for a Tier 2 classification.
The survey reviews the statistics of over 1,400 buildings and towers in 40 cities, and does an annual cursory review of a dozen more potential qualifiers for the top 25.
From Moscow to
Tokyo, to Chinese Village
In a 2012 landmark development, Tokyo just completed the world’s newest tallest tower (as opposed to building - think Seattle’s Space Needle or San Antonio’s Tower of the Americas, but much bigger). At 2,080 feet to its pinnacle, the Tokyo Sky Tree surpassed the previous, brief record-holder, the Canton Tower in Guangzhou, which overtook Toronto’s CN tower just in 2009, itself built in 1976. For those in Texas, think three Towers of the Americas stacked on top of each other.
If the Asian building boom’s Middle East front has just moved beyond Dubai, in China it continues its spread beyond its first and second tier cities, with thirty-three Chinese cities now sporting at least one 200m+ tower. In an extreme case, the village of Huaxi, home to 30,000, has just completed a tower just slightly taller than the Chrysler building in New York (see New York Times article). Perhaps Lufkin or Nacogdoches should be so inspired. Still, the bigger Chinese cities still hold the edge, with Tianjin now embarked on a 117-story, 1,957-foot building that will become the world’s fourth (not first or second) tallest building when completed in 2015.
Why this ranking? We believe it is one measure of the changing balance of power in our world.
The CTBUH report points
out that in 1990, the U.S. accounted for 66% of all the 200m+ buildings
completed that year. In 2011, that number was 2.3%. The
world may be in recession, but the construction industry is still
creating more jobs than ever in many places outside the U.S., in part
due to economic bets placed by American corporations that see more
profits in lower-paid, less-protected employees elsewhere.
As
recently as 2000, eleven American Cities were among the tallest 25,
and four were in the top ten. With the departure in 2011 of
Dallas and Philadelphia from the top 25, and Houston from the top
ten, it is now five and two, respectively. By contrast, only
four Chinese cities were in the top 25 in 2000, two of them in the
top ten. In 2011, with a lot more competition, the Chinese now
have six and four respectively.
As part of that trend, Guangzhou squeezed past New York City, pushing the former number one world’s tallest city for a century, further down, now to 6th place. New York City's rapid fall from its long-held first place, abruptly initiated by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, may see a brief halt, perhaps even partial reversal, if the full slate of new World Trade Center towers are completed in the next three years as planned (which is not a certainty), along with the One 57 skyscraper in the Midtown area, possibly securing even a third or fourth place in 2015 (even if they had all been completed in 2011, New York would still rank only second). One measure in which New York does and will always lead is in its richness of monumental skyscrapers of an earlier era that feature massive, yet intricate and beautiful masonry work.
