Geography Is Skyscrapers: Why So Tall? (Remix)

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Sorry for the remixed episode, but time got away from Hunter and myself. So enjoy this episode all about the geography of skyscrapers from waaaay back when we had like no listeners. 🤓

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
Welcome to Geography is Everything, becauseHunter, well, geography relates to just
about everything. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's probably a fun
exercise at some point that we shouldtake to actually figure out what maybe geography
doesn't apply to. I'm sure wecould come up with something. I think

(00:24):
most of the things that we're interestedin talking about all into the realm of
geography, so maybe that's why wethink it's everything, you know. I
was actually thinking about this a littlebit the other day as I was,
you know, thinking about this newconcept that we're working with, and I
was like, it would be funto do an episode on Mars. But
is Mars geography Well, I meangeography references geo references the Earth, so

(00:47):
exactly, there is spatial aspects toMars. But I might need a new
name, marsography is everything something likethat or whatever. I guess the Greek
word for Mars was, because Ithink Mars is Roman. Whatever. Well,
welcome to the show. We arehere. We are back again recording
Hunter and I are recording this theday after daylight savings time switch, so

(01:12):
it's actually an hour earlier. SoI'm I was taken by surprise by it.
This morning I'm a little more tiredthan I expect it to be.
But we are here, we're recording. We'll go ahead and just do some
quick introductions. Hunter. Hello,I'm Hunter Shoby. I'm a professor of
geography at Portland State University. I'mthe co author of two books with my
colleague David Bannis. They are portlandIst, a Cultural Atlas, and Upper

(01:34):
Left Cities, a Cultural Atlas ofSan Francisco, Portland, and Seattle.
And of course I am co hostof this podcast and co host of the
substack operation that we're starting to rundown to. Yeah right, hunh yeah,
And my name is Jeff that youmight know me from my YouTube channel
Geography by Jeff, but where Ido a bunch of other geography things,

(01:57):
geography videos, so they're really funto watch. You can find at YouTube
dot com slash Little Ass Signed Geographyby Jeff all sort of one word And
I used to make this clarification andmaybe I should do it again, but
just so people are super duper clear, the way I spell my name is
Geoff, so you know, don'tdon't search Jeff as a JA. Although
that said, all of these linksrenowns of the show notes so you actually

(02:19):
don't have to remember that at all. Like Hunter said, we both have
a substack newsletter that is now sortof part of this whole podcast world that
we are starting to create, theGeography is Everything extended universe for Marvel fans
out No, it's just a placefor us to sort of write a little
bit more about geography and hosts somemaybe some smaller exclusive content over there for
our people who are really super duperfans of ours, And you can find

(02:43):
that just that Geography is Everything dotsubstack dot com. But again, those
are also in the show notes,so you don't really need to remember so
long as you know how to getto whatever app you're using show notes,
and I think that varies based onapp. The only other thing I want
to mention before we sort of introducetoday's topic is, you know, as
usual, we're always looking to getmore people to review us on Apple Podcasts.
So hey, if you're liking whatyou're hearing today and you think that

(03:07):
you know, Hunter and I arefun to listen to and you're learning stuff,
please please review us. We wouldsuper duper appreciate it. Yeah,
and with that, let's get tothe topic. Let's go for it.
What are we talking about today today? The topic is skyscrapers. Geography is
skyscrapers. Yeah, exactly, geographyis skyscrapers. And just to give a

(03:30):
little bit of a teaser, notnot dive too too far, and we
have about an hour worth of episodetoday. But why skyscrapers Hunter, Well,
there's a lot that gets built intoskyscrapers other than concrete and steel and
other other materials that we'll talk about. There is a lot of geographical spatial

(03:51):
stories we can tell about skyscrapers,and some of them relate to wealth and
affluence, some of them relate toaspirations for wealth and out influence for power.
And there is an interesting geography ofhow skyscrapers originated in one part of
the world and spread from there toother parts of the world. So there's
a lot of interesting spatial geographic storiesto tell about skyscrapers. Yeah. Absolutely.

(04:15):
I think most people are pretty youknow, if you live in a
city, you're probably pretty accustomed toyour city skyline. And we're going to
talk a little bit about that andwhat that means, because you know,
there's a lot of symbology built intoalmost every city skyline. These days.
That said, I want to makea quick sort of point of clarification here
that this is not to be confusedwith an episode on cities. This is

(04:36):
not a geography of cities episode thatwill come at some point, but it's
worth pointing out that skyscrapers and citiesare often conflated with one another. Obviously,
skyscrapers exist within cities, but thatdoesn't mean that a skyscraper is sort
of the embodiment of what a cityis. A city has a million more
different aspects to it, just oneslice of what we can talk about.

(05:00):
We talk about cities, right,and at some point, you know what,
there'll probably be episodes on you know, geography as stadiums, geography is,
you know, and then aspects ofcities, right like I obviously I
have a few transportation ideas, cookingin the the old head, so you
know, we'll do We'll do differentepisodes about various aspects of cities in addition
to maybe a larger one at somepoint. But I do think probably more
than anything else, skyscrapers often getsi don't know, just tied to two

(05:25):
cities, and in a way thatfew other things really truly do. So
we're gonna be talking a lot aboutskyscrapers today. We're not going to be
talking necessarily about specific cities, althoughwe will obviously talk about skyscrapers within specific
cities, just a point of clarification. So with that, let's move on
to sort of and this is somethingthat we we we've been doing a little

(05:46):
bit more of Hunters episodes are usuallylittle bit better about it than mine.
But which is just running through someterminology, which is always a good thing
because you know, a lot ofthese a lot of what we talk about
has you know, their own sortof industry words or industry definitions for what
what qualifies as something. And youknow, as it turns out, Hunter,
the skyscraper industry is no different.So let's let's talk about some terminology
first. So that the first,the term skyscraper was first applied to buildings

(06:10):
that really had two qualifications, andthat is one that is a steel frame
and was at least ten stories tall. Now, obviously, Hunter, we
know that ten stories today is that'snot that's not a super tall building.
That nobody would call that a skyscrapertoday, right, So it's worth pointing
out that, you know, aswe're talking about skyscrapers, and as we

(06:32):
get deeper into our discussion of skyscrapersthat and we're going to try and hit
on this as we as we gothrough, but the definition is going to
change and be adapted, and sowe'll make note of that as much as
possible, as much as we remember. But just know that you know,
skyscrapers, you know, and steelframe construction buildings, you know, at

(06:53):
one point were much smaller than theyare. And yo, this is almost
like it's just it's just an aspectof sort of know, a skyscraper,
you know, back then ten storieswas actually pretty mammothly tall. It wasn't
that long ago that, you know, having a multi storied building was fairly
uncommon. And so the I justhave here inside of my notes that the
definition of of of a skyscrapers isbased on a steel skeleton as opposed to

(07:16):
sort of the you know, Iguess you know, if you go back
a little bit farther, there wasconstruction that was sort of load bearing masonry
which would be like bricks, whichreally passed their practical limit. And I
have here my notes in eighteen ninetynine, which with Chicago's monod moned knock
building. I might have mispronounced that, but mona knock building. And so
that that's again, and we're gonnacome back and we're gonna talk about different

(07:38):
sort of technologies later around taller buildingsthat aren't steel. But really, if
you go back, you know,one hundred years or so ago, the
the building sort of fell along twodifferent sort of sizes. You would have
wood frame sort of buildings and thosewould only be a few stories tall,
and then once it reached a certainpoint, if you wanted to go higher,

(07:58):
you would have to do masonry building. And until sort of the steel
frame building came into play, youcould only build so high because each one
of those would and masonry had anupper limit of how much weight could physically
support or how much how much theycould physically support weight. So let's get
into now, and Hunter, allA, you lead this sort of discussion
of sort of, well, what'sthe skyscraper today. Well, so there's

(08:22):
a few things we can talk about. First of all, as you mentioned,
it's as skyscraper is now defined assomething that's over one hundred and fifty
meters tall. Right, that's tall. That's pretty tall, right, And
so I guess another requirement is thatI'm seeing in my notes is that at
least fifty percent of their height mustbe habitable, so that you know,

(08:43):
more at least half of it hasto be where people can occupy that can
office or residence or restaurant or whatever. Yeah, And I think I think
that that qualification came because at onepoint there was you know, as we
talk about sort of terminology, youknow, there's a there's a certain amount
of our treariness and all of thisthat we're talking about. But these are
organizations that are you know, theymight be industry organizations. They're sort of

(09:05):
establishing this to the mouth that itreally matters sort of depends on sort of
how much you really care about it. But I think there was a certain
point where, you know, peoplewere claiming sort of to have you know,
a really tall skyscraper for something likean antenna pole that was sort of
you know, maybe one hundred feettaller or something like that. And so
that's sort of where some of thesequalifications started to come into play. Yeah.

(09:26):
And so one of the places wherewe were able to get quite a
bit of information about this is anorganization called the Council on Tall Buildings and
Urban Habitat or the ctb UH,and that's headquartered in Chicago's which is significant
because skyscrapers really originated in Chicago.The first ones rose in Chicago. And
this organization has three different criteria formeasuring the height of a building because that

(09:52):
there's some variations here. So oneis the height to the architectural top and
so that is from the lowest levelestric entrance to the top of the building,
which includes spires which are not inhabitable, but excludes things like flagpoles and
antenna things like that. So that'sthat's one way of measuring things. Another

(10:13):
way of measuring the heightest spyspapers isthe height of the highest occupied floor,
so that would include the spires oranything like that, the highest floor in
which people can occupy, not wherethey can go to fix things, but
where they can work or live orsomething like that. And then there's another
category which is height to the tip, which is the highest point of the
building, which includes antena, flagpoles, technical equipment or something like that.

(10:37):
So those, you know, youcan get into a debate over height based
on those three things because things mightget ranked differently based on that criteria.
There used to be a fourth criteriaup into two thousand and nine, which
was the height of the roof,but many contemporary skyscrapers don't have flat roofs,
and so determining where the roof isand where that should be was so

(10:58):
contentious that they've just eliminated that particularcategory in two thousand and nine. And
now that there are skyscrapers that aremuch taller than one hundred and fifty meters,
there's a couple more categories two forus to consider. What is super
tall, which seems pretty pretty amorphous, right, but that's something that's over
three hundred meters tall. And thenthere's the Mega tall, which is twice

(11:22):
as tall as it super tall,or the bottom threshold for super tall,
that's over six hundred meters tall.And I believe there's only maybe four of
those or something like that in theworld, so that's not super common at
this point, but there are somebuildings that fall into that category. Yeah,
And I would bet everybody listening tothis podcast at least knows of one
Mega tall skyscraper, just because it'sso famous. And we'll talk about that

(11:45):
in a little bit. But Iagree, you know, as we're as
we're talking about all of these differentterminologies Hunter, you know, there's very
specific you know, architectural heights andyou like, all these different like very
specific terms, and then we getto sort of qualifications just how tall something
is, and it's like super talland mega tall, which sounds just so
just like almost like whimsical for anindustry that that is, you know,
right, that deals with such exactingsort of measurements. But yeah, yeah,

(12:09):
it's just funny. Yeah, comeup with something like uber tall or
I don't know, something else willcome next. I'm really sure what.
Yeah, you know that that's agood point. I think, you know,
especially as we get to maybe youknow, as we get to maybe
what could potentially be the tallest buildinghere, and there might be a new
classification that's needed for that, andwe can talk a little bit of that
and a little bit as well.But I think overall, you know,
and this is not necessarily skyscraper.The term is not necessarily supposed to be

(12:33):
conflated with the term high rise,which I do think happens quite often.
And in fact, I I remember, you know, as a kid talking
you know, obviously, you know, I I think kids talk about a
lot of different things. But Iremember as a kid, you know,
having like conversation you know, withother kids, you know about you know,
high rises and skyscrapers just tall buildingsin general. Right, kids talk

(12:54):
about this, you know, kindsof things like that, And I remember
noting like, oh, like,you know, some people were calling it
high rises and some people are callingit skyscrapers. And I was sort of
taking this as like, you know, just a difference in sort of like
you know, well, yeah,it has two different words, right,
you know, maybe it's like apeople from you know, this Bear area,
you know, call it this thing, maybe like a regional dialect kind
of thing. And so I wasactually kind of surprised to find that high
rise actually does have a different meaningentirely. And so something can be a

(13:20):
skyscraper and a high rise and it'sreally just a high rise as any building
that's over ten floors, and sotrue too. I guess it's name,
you know, it's a it justit's a building that's rises high. And
so that can include wood frame,it can crude masonry, it can include
you know, basically any other materialsthat might exist out there, so long
as it hits that ten floor.Obviously, skyscrapers that we've already established,

(13:41):
you know, that's much higher,it's much taller. So and so I
think, you know, as aswe've talked a little bit about sort of
the definition terminologies behind sort of youknow, what is a skyscraper today,
you know, it's fun to justsort of maybe mention that's your city that
you're living in right now, unlessyou're living in a few key ones,
probably doesn't actually have that many skyscrapers. So I have in here, you

(14:03):
know, my notes if you know, if you live in Phoenix, you
actually technically don't have a skyscraper.You have tall buildings, you have high
rises, but Phoenix's tallest building itcomes in at four hundred and eighty three
feet, which is well, that'sabout nine feet shorter than the Phinian the
definition of a skyscraper at four hundredand ninety two feet, which I just
think is really interesting because again,as we you know, I think skylines

(14:28):
have become very symbolic for a lotof people, and as we're going to
get to here in a minute,you have skyscrapers have a lot of historic
meaning and sort of became a veryprominent way of displaying sort of wealth and
prominence to moting a city, right, promoting a city absolutely for Hunter and
I we're here in Portland, andPortland only has four skyscrapers, though I

(14:48):
don't think that's taking into account.We have a new one that's going up
and I'm not sure how tall ournew building is going to be, but
as of today, for open buildings, we only have four. And so
you know, various cities have moreor less. I did. I did
a bit of research poking around atvarious cities. But I would just encourage
you a listener, you know,whatever your city you're in, or whatever
your nearest city is, you know, maybe look at a picture of the

(15:09):
skyline and then go actually see howmany of those buildings are actually skyscrapers,
because unless you know, I wouldargue, unless you're in you know,
maybe again a few key cities inthe US, I would I would probably
say, there's most of those buildingsare probably not skyscrapers. And I think
with that, and let's go aheadand just jump into some history. Hunter,
do you want to kick us offwith some history here? Sure?
Well, you know, talk you'vealready mentioned that there's certain technological moments that

(15:33):
had to arrive before a skyscraper couldeven exist in the first place, because,
as you said, there's limits towhat you can do with you load
bearing walls made out of concrete andthose kinds of things. So it really
took the innovation of steel frame constructionin order to be able to create the
kind of height that we are talkingabout when we're talking about what a skyscraper

(15:54):
is today. And so the steelindustry is a really important part of this
conversation. And you know, steelis part of the story of the Industrial
Revolution, part of the story ofindustrialization as well. And so it's interesting
that if we talk about Chicago,which we need to talk about a little
bit right now, because that's theplace where steel frame so we came online
and these buildings started to be constructed. Chicago went from being a very very

(16:18):
small place to a very big cityin forty or fifty years in the middle
of the eighteen hundreds, and sothat story of the industrialization of Chicago speaks
to the growth of this thing calledthe skyscrape. Ger. Yeah, and
I think when we're talking about thesteel industry and sort of like this,
I guess technological improvements for lack ofa better term, around steel. You

(16:42):
know, there's a very famous photoand I believe it's of New York not
Chicago, but there's a very famousphoto of sort of like construction workers sitting
at the top of a building andyou know, they're eating lunch or something,
and what they're sitting on is asteel beam. And it's really those
steel beams that we're talking about assort of the technological improvement or to the
Industrial Revolution. They could make steel, but making steel of that sort of

(17:06):
weight, of that you know,form was not possible, and so it
really was that that when we're talkingabout sort of the steel industry, it
was really that sort of improvement thatenabled all of this growth. Like you
said, Chicago grew, you know, from from and this happened to a
lot of different cities, but itgrew so much over you know, forty
or fifty years, just sort ofthat that that that that you know,

(17:27):
building's popping up left and right.Those famous photos that you're talking about that
I think a lot of people canrecall from memory of workers eating launch on
a steel beam hig above New YorkCity. Those were not candid shots.
Those were those were posed shots topromote That's not the question of the building.
I mean it's not I mean,that kind of thing may have happened,
but it wasn't that a photographer justhappened upon these people and took the

(17:49):
picture. But those were carefully craftedto promote what was going on. Yeah,
But then Hunter, there was anotherthing that sort of was required or
for these buildings to actually be usefuland functional, right. Yeah. So
if you're talking about something that's overten twenty thirty stories and you're thinking about

(18:11):
how you're going to access the higherfloors, it becomes difficult to want to
climb up thirty flights of stairs,right, I mean I would say impossible,
right, So, and to movethings into these buildings so that that
you can furnish them and all thatkind of technology, and so the elevator
is a really essentral part of theconstruction of Skysprait, right Yeah. I

(18:33):
mean I have here in my notesis just sort of like an aside,
but like not really. But youknow, in a certain light, this
could almost be this episode could almostbe reframed, as you know, geography
as the elevator, right, becauseso many of the buildings today you know,
you're you're even thinking, you know, I think you mentioned thirty stories
before, but you know, ifyou're thinking ten stories, and that's a

(18:55):
pretty monumental effort to climb ten stories. You know, there's and I don't
know off the top of my head, but I think in New York there's
a lot of buildings that are waylike four stories or five stories that are
just walk ups. That's right,And that you know, a four story
or five story walk up that that'sthat's that's a kind of a big lift,
that's a commitment. Yeah, youknow, I lived in an apartment

(19:18):
here in Portland that was only fourstories tall, and I had an elevator,
although sometimes I did take the stairs. But you know, I think
the point of clarification here is wedon't necessarily need to spend so much time
on the elevator. But it's justthat, you know, elevators really did
you know? It was an enablingtechnology, right, It really did enable
everything else that we're talking about today. And you know, I have I

(19:40):
have in my notes sort of oneof the early uses of elevators was not
actually for buildings, but was ratherused for mining and coal mining. Is
yeah, I think that's really interesting, Hunter. So I've got something that
goes back a little bit further thanthat, the use of elevators. And
so remember elevators previously were powered alot of time by by people, for

(20:02):
example, and they'd be a pulleysystem or something like oh yeah, yeah,
that makes sense. Yeah, Imean like at a certain point,
like pulleys are just I mean,yeah, pulleys are fundamentally you know,
very cool and allows you know,something to be like, you know that's
very heavy, you know, pulledup with relatively low strength, but that's
required necessarily, you know, powergeneration, electricity generation, that's right.
And so one of the places whereyou could find an elevator circa eighty a

(20:27):
d or common eracee would be theRoman Colisseum because they are apparently about twenty
five elevators in the Roman Colosseum thatwere used for raising animals to the floor
of the Colosseum. And they couldsupport about six hundred pounds, which apparently
is the weight of about two lions, and that could be lifted some twenty

(20:47):
three feet powered by up to eightindividuals. And so you know, this
isn't the kind of elevator that we'rethinking of. But if you think about
the Roman Colosseum there, you know, how did they get these animals there?
And this is a whole different thingas well, all different topic,
but it's interesting to think that,you know, the Colisseum is a big
central part of the city, andthat the way that that operated, the

(21:10):
way that we think about what wenton there was also a little bit dependent
on elevators as well. Yeah,that's incredible. I mean, I guess
maybe not surprising. I feel like, you know, the ancient Romans did
invent a lot of different things thatwe sort of take for granted today,
including probably granted well so, butwhen we're talking about the kind of elevators

(21:30):
that you would need in in askyscraper and a large building, you couldn't
have something where people were pulling it, or you needed something that had some
security attached to it as well.So there was in eighteen fifty two there
was something called the safety elevator whichwas invented. And the safety elevator is
one where if the cable that's hoistingthe you know, the box, were

(21:56):
to break, that the cab wouldn'tfall to the bottom floor. And so
that's really what it took to havesome that innovation for that kind of safety
in order to operate an elevator ina building. And the person who invented
this is then has the name.It was named Elijah Otis, and so
the Otis Elevator is something that probablypeople see because the Otis Elevator Company still

(22:18):
exists today. It's got its headquartersin Framingham, Connecticut, and it's the
world's largest manufacturer or vertical transportation system, so that includes escalators and a bunch
of other things as well. Well. Otis displayed one of these safety elevators
at a World fair and dramatically wason the lift himself and then cut the
cable and then it just dropped likea foot or two and then it was

(22:41):
okay. And this was to tryto convince people that this was viable technology
that could be used that people couldtrust. And the first was first one
was installed in a building I believein New York in eighteen fifty seven,
and so this is an interesting thing. There's one other thing I want to
mention about the elevators though, andthere's a couple things that I think that's
important to mention. One is thatoriginally with taller buildings, like you were

(23:06):
saying before the skyscraper, the verywealthy would live at the bottom because nobody
wanted to walk up all those stairs, and so that it was the you
know, it was the poorer peoplewho would have to slep all the way
up to the top and the wealthierpeople who were at the bottom. The
elevator reversed that hierarchy, so allof a sudden, you know, being

(23:26):
at the top, which is symbolicallyhierarchical, and then having the views and
all that was made possible by theelevators. So that social hierarchy which follows,
you know, an actual physical hierarchy, was enabled by the elevator.
And then the other thing to consideris that, you know, really tall
buildings have to have multiple elevators,and they don't go all the way from

(23:48):
a lot of times, they don'tgo from the ground floor to the top.
They go to what's called the skylobby, and then there's a change
and then you go over to anotherbank of elevators. And that's also to
make things practical so they don't gettied up. But all those elevator shafts
take up a lot of space ina building, so it really complicates skyscraper
design. So skyscrapers are designed,accounting for where to place the elevators and

(24:11):
how to make that economical in termsof space was a really important thing.
So yeah, the elevator really criticalfor the invention of skyscrapers. Yeah,
and I think if you see anew I mean it doesn't necessarily even technically
need to be a skyscraper, butany building that's going to have an elevator
in it, you'll see you asthey're a sort of building out the foundation,
what have you. That the firstthings that they are building as those

(24:33):
wherever the elevators are going to be. So that's sort of there's usually like
one or two sort of concrete tubesor something that will sort of be built
up a few stories ahead of everythingelse. And it's I think it's exactly
for what you just said, Hunter. So we are about to launch into
just a little bit of history aroundskyscrapers and mostly inside the US. But
before we do that, Hunter,let's do time for an ad break.

(24:56):
ADS. Yeah, it's time personads. So we will be right back
and we're back talking about skyscrapers.So when we we sort of left off,
sort of talking about the history ofthe steel industry and the elevators.
Now we're going to launch into maybesome specific cities or I guess examples of
cities sort of where some of thesefirst skyscrapers were built. And so,

(25:17):
you know, I think a lotof us, you know, certainly over
here in the US, you know, we think of, you know,
one city when we think about skyscrapers, and that would be New York City.
But New York maybe, as aswe've already sort of alluded to,
was not the first city to get, you know, an actual skyscraper.
In fact, it was Chicago.You know, Hunter mentioned earlier that you
know, Chicago over the course ofyou know, forty years, was really

(25:38):
you know, popping up, youknow, buildings left and right. And
so in eighteen eighty nine, Chicagoactually had the first skyscraper based on that
older definition, and so this wasa building is the Rand McNally Building,
and it was built and it wasabout one hundred and forty eight feet tall
or I think exactly one hundred andforty feet tall. I don't know about

(25:59):
the different architectural hype, but thatI don't even know if they had those
definitions back then. Now that said, well, we could talk a lot
about Chicago, and we're going torevisit Chicago. I think it. I
think we got to jump over toNew York City. Hunter, you want
to talk a little about New YorkCity. Yeah, absolutely, So Yeah,
it looks like I'm looking at someinformation here about the tallest building in

(26:22):
the world over time, and inChicago at one point the Home Insurance Building
had that crown at eighteen eighty five, but then in eighteen ninety the World
Building in New York City took overthere, and then from eighteen ninety to
it looks like about nineteen seventy four, there were a series of buildings in
New York that were the tallest buildingin the world, and so there was

(26:47):
sort of an unofficial competition, Ithink within developers and builders in New York
to take this this prestigious title ofhaving the tallest building, and it went
to the Manhattan Life Building eighteen ninetyfour, the Park Row Building eighteen ninety
nine, the Singer Building in nineteenoh eight, the Woolworth Building, which
is a very famous design. Andso the other thing that you know,

(27:10):
we could start to mix in andwhen people when when people talk about the
skyscrapers are not only talking about hype, but they're talking about different design eras
as well. Absolutely, and thisera where you know, the Chrysler Building,
for example, which came up innineteen thirty has, you know,
sort of stood the test of timein terms of the approval that architects and

(27:32):
people have given it for it's ourdeco design. The Bank of Manhattan building
in nineteen thirty and then the EmpireStout Building in nineteen thirty one held that
title for quite some time, youknow, growing up just outside of New
York, that building sort of loomedpretty large as well in terms of reputation.
I would say it still does.It still does like it's still like

(27:53):
the the number I think it's thestat I had was like it was a
number one most photographed building at leastin the United States. So and it's
it's not the tallest building anymore,but it's it's still just so iconic Chrysler
building as well. Yeah, that'sright. Then it was in nineteen seventy
two, one World Trade Center,which of course doesn't exist anymore, became

(28:15):
the tallest building in the world,one of the Twin Towers, and then
we move out of New York backto Chicago in nineteen seventy four when the
Sears Tower was constructed m hm,and before before we jump back over to
Chicago. Yes, I just hadthis this really just to maybe just emphasize
how quickly some of these buildings werepopping up here. So we go back

(28:37):
to the Chrysler building and we talkedabout this inside our New York City episode
a little bit. But there waslike there was an unofficial but you know,
sort of well known race of youknow, who's going to have the
tallest building during this period of time. And it was really between the Chrysler
Building, which is built by WalterChrysler, you know of Chrysler, you
know, automobile, and and theManhattan Manhattan Company Building, which is the
Bank of Manhattan. And so youhad mentioned both of the and so there

(29:00):
was sort of a race to seewho who is going to be tallest obviously
I guess maybe not obviously, butthe Christis christ Are Building ultimately won that
race. However, while this wassort of you know, much much was
sort of made about this during thetime, you know, this sort of
race and you know, these youknow, Titans of Wall Street or what
have you building up these you knowbuildings, the Empire State Building, and

(29:21):
I have here in my notes.This is from the book Neil or Higher
by Neil Bascombe. The Empire StateBuilding appeared really more or less out of
nowhere, rising up in a yearand a half to win the contest that
everyone thought was really between these twoother buildings, which is just really sort
of I think it's just interesting.I think it just really painted a really
clear picture of one buildings were alwaysgetting taller at this point, and to
nobody, I guess, you know, I guess now we know the Empire

(29:44):
State Building did hold onto that thattitle for a little while, but during
this specific time, nobody was reallyholding onto the title for for very long.
And so that's just really it's justreally interesting. Okay. So that
now, now let's jump back overto Chicago, which with I think the
building that you're going to talk about, which is pretty right, So the
Sears Tower in nineteen seventy four tookthat crown back from New York and if

(30:06):
but if we move ahead much further, we find that the tallest buildings in
the world, the tallest skyscrapers,are no longer in the United States,
and in nineteen ninety eight the PatronasTowers were constructed in kualaim Poor, Malaysia,
becoming the largest the tallest buildings inthe world. And that was true
until I think two thousand and four, based on my notes, when Type

(30:26):
one oh one was constructed, andthen that was eclipsed just six years later
when what is now the tallest buildingin the world was completed, and that
is the Burj Khalifa, which wasfinished in twenty ten in Dubai. Yeah,
and I think, what if you'rean maybe not everybody knows what each

(30:47):
of these buildings looked like. ObviouslyI do because I've done a lot of
research now. But you know,if you look at the towers that you
know, obviously start with the ChryslerBuilding. You know, Chrysler Building was
very iconic, very had very youknow, I guess iconic look. Empire
Building em very State building, alsovery iconic, unique design, you know,
the Sears Tower, Willis Tower,you know, maybe maybe not quite

(31:08):
as iconic, although I can stilldefinitely picture. But you know, as
you jump over to Qualimpur and thenTaipei and then the Bursh Khalifa, these
all have very specific design styles.These are not these are not, for
lack of a better term, justa glass tower. They the architectural intension
behind them was very clear. Right. These very different from the Twin Towers

(31:29):
in New York the World Trade Center, which were giant rectangles. Right.
I mean there was not much adoormant there, and it kind of reflected
the building style of the time.And you know what was coming out of
the nineteen fifties and sixties. Andas you're pointing out, the skyscrapers that
are the tallest ones today and someof the ones that aren't the tallest but
are still very tall, have verydifferent innovative designs, right, And there's

(31:52):
a reason for that that we're goingto get to in a little bit.
But let's start talking a little bitabout skyscrapers to day. We're already starting
to talk about sort of some modernday sky skyscraper such as the Burj Khalifa,
and so I have here in mynotes. So this is going back
to our friends of the Council ofTall Council on Tall Buildings and urban habitat.
And this is just a sort ofa fun, sort of maybe astonishing
fact. But between nineteen thirty andtwenty ten, so that's eighty years the

(32:14):
first fifty skyscrapers in the world werebuilt, and then the time period between
twenty ten and twenty twenty fifteen,fifty more were built. Right, So
the astonishing speed at which buildings werebeing built, mostly in Asia, and
that's kind of where we're seeing alot of these these buildings being built,
was really incredible. Now, granted, this is based on the modern definition

(32:37):
that we ran through earlier in thisepisode, not that older app definition,
so I don't have the statistic rightin front of me. But you know,
obviously if we were using that olderdefinition, there would be a lot
more buildings having been built. Sothis would be any buildings, you know,
that would be go back to mynose, four hundred and ninety three
feet tall, four hundred and ninetyninety two feet tall. But still,
I think pretty incredible. I thinkit speaks to, you know, sort

(32:58):
of maybe the shift in power andwealth. Maybe not shift, maybe that's
the wrong word, but certainly thepower and wealth growing in Asia, China
and even Japan and you know,qual Impur, Malaysia and Taipei and Taiwan
and all this kind of stuff soyeah, so it turns out to speak
to this point that you're making.From the nineteen thirties of the nineteen seventies,

(33:19):
more than ninety percent of the skyscrapersin the world were in North America,
ninety percent by the nineteen eighties nineteennineties, that dropped to about eighty
percent in North America, still quitea lot. By the first decade of
the two thousands, more than halfthe skyscrapers were outside of North America,
most of them in Asia, andthen by the twenty tens, more than

(33:40):
seventy five percent of the skyscrapers wereoutside of North America, roughly split between
Southwest Asia, which is sometimes calledthe Middle East, but we'll call it
Southwest Asia and the rest of Asia. So that's a pretty dramatic change and
a fairly small amount of time.Yeah, no, it's it's incredible.
And you know, this one,this isn't this kind of you know,

(34:04):
growth trajectory, isn't I wouldn't sayit isn't atypical for for for any sort
of business or or I guess industry. Right, there's always gonna be that
certain point where you know, whateverit is takes off and sort of hits,
you know, a bit of anexponential growth for it. That's what
every industry wants. And you know, the skyscraper building industry is, as
it turns out, an actual industry, and so in a lot of ways,

(34:24):
this is sort of what a lotof companies and you know, sort
of the capitalism system was gearing foranyways. And that's just a sort of
important caveat that this isn't this isn'tdifferent from a lot of different businesses.
However, what gets wrapped up intoskyscrapers and the skyscraper building industry that you
know isn't really tied to all thatmany other industries is the sort of symbolism

(34:45):
behind everything that you're building. Andso that's kind of why you know,
we see this shift towards building thesemegabuildings in other parts of the world,
is because these other parts of theworld wanted that that same sort of symbolic
sort of power projection, wealth projection, status, reputation datus. Yeah,
absolutely so key. Yeah. Andto put a to put another point on

(35:08):
that, there is a building that'sunder construction right now in Saudi Arabia called
the Jetta Tower. It was previouslyreferred to as the Kingdom Tower, and
that was projected to be the largestbuilding, the tallest building in the world.
However, construction stopped I think intwenty eighteen due to labor it some
political issues that were happening, soapparently construction is not happening on that.

(35:31):
But that building was projected to eclipsethe Burj Khalifa and to be at I
think a full kilometer tall, sothat you know that's there's symbol there's there's
symbolism to having a building that's akilometer tall. It's located on the north
side of Jetta, which is aSaudi Arabian city, which is on the

(35:52):
Red Sea, and it's built awayfrom everything else because that's where they had
room basically to put it. Andof course there has to be political and
economic capital build these things as well. And the reason that you have skyscrapers
generally in central business districts is becausethat's how you can justify the enormous cost
of putting these things together. Iswhere the value of land is so high

(36:15):
that it makes sense to construct somethingreally expensive and really tall in these places.
And of course it also takes thispolitical will economic will to that goes
along with the symbolism that you're talkingabout, which is that we're creating something
massive and impressive here that will beknown throughout the world. And even if
it's not the tallest one, itadds to, as you're saying, the

(36:37):
profile of the city, the skylineof the city, and it sort of
projects power and wealth and the ideathat this place is a place where you
might want to do business. Yeah, exactly. And you know, if
we go back to sort of ourwhen we were sort of breaking out the
different kinds of sort of skyscrapers,and you know, there was the you
know, at least one hundred andfifty meters tall, and then there was

(36:57):
a Super tall, and then theMega Tall. This is sort of what
we were alluding to this building,the Jetta Tower, as you know,
possibly needing you know, a newa new classification, a super duper tall
a their term right now, becauseif you remember the Mega Tall was,
you know, that's six hundred meters. Now this is this is projected to
be you know, a thousand metersor maybe a little bit over whenever if
it ever gets completed, and that'sthat's significantly taller than Mega talls, So

(37:21):
that that and that that's no accident. Nobody just winds up as being,
you know, over a kilometer tall. That didn't you know, that was
obviously very intentional. And there's alsoprobably some regional sort of one upsmanship going
on between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which you know they're they're obviously very
close to each other and they competein a lot of ways. So for
Saudi Arabia to want to build atower taller than the Bersh Khalifa, you

(37:43):
know, that's that's not for nothing. You know, there's another aspect that
we can talk about here since we'retalking about this. You know, this
ongoing competition is raced to have thetallest building. And there's a term I
I stumbled across when I was doingresearch on the with the information from the
Council on Tall Buildings in Urban Habitat, and that's something called vanity height.

(38:04):
Have you did you run across thatterm? No, I didn't tell me
what that is. So vanity heightis the height difference between a skyscraper's tallest
point, which is often a spireof some kind, and the highest usable
floor. The vanity height is theheight that can't be occupied in other words,
And so for the Burj Khalifa,for example, the pinnacle height is

(38:27):
eight hundred and twenty nine meters,truly massive, and the top floor height
is six hundred and five meters,which is also really tall. But that
means that there's two hundred and twentyfour meters that falls into this category of
what the Council in Tall Buildings andUrban Habitat calls vanity height, which is
twenty seven percent of the building.Wow, okay, so that's actually that's
a lot. That's a lot ofright. So if you compare that,

(38:49):
for example, with the World TradeCenter, which you know doesn't exist anymore,
that was had twenty one percent,so it still quite a bit and
a lot of that was an antenna. Yeah. For Type one oh one
it was fourteen percent. For thePatrona's towers, it was seventeen percent.
For the Empire State Building was sixteenpercent. For the Chrysler building it was
fourteen percent. So it seems thathis buildings have gotten taller. Part of

(39:14):
the way that this height has beenachieved is by something called vanity height,
which is, you know, addingdesign aspects which aren't necessarily inhabitable. Having
said that, the Bersh Khalifa,by any of those three definitions that we
gave at the beginning, would bethe tallest building. So it's so many,
it's still massive even for the occupiedheight is truly truly tall. Yeah,

(39:37):
I mean I have here in mynotes, you know, talking about
the one one World Trade Center,which is Freedom Towers, the one that
does exist now, built sort ofyou know, ten years or so ago
at this point, and so theheight of that building is you know,
one thousand, seven hundred and seventysix feet. Obviously, again you don't
just end up on that number orthere's a lot of symbology, you know,
built into sort of you know,when the US became you know,

(39:58):
it became its own country ver anddeclaration of independence rather and you know that
is reached due to an antenna.So I'm not sure what the breakdown is,
but obviously, you know, thesymbology gets wrapped up into just whatever
the highest point is, and howeverthey can sort of justify that, you
know. We also we also talkedabout how the buildings are looking a lot
different, right, They're not soboxing necessarily, and one of the ways

(40:23):
that that's been achieved is that thewalls of skyscrapers oftentimes now are not load
bearing anymore, like the building supportsits own weight, and they have one
are called curtain walls, which isthe facade, the outer and covering of
a building, which aren't designed tohold structural weight but rather, you know,

(40:45):
it keeps people from falling out ofthe buildings, keeps weather from coming
into the buildings. But this isanother change. You can use much lightweight,
lighter weight materials and you know,glass facades and all these kinds of
things. So that is another wayof understanding how skyscrapers have changed a little
bit over time. Is that youhave the facades which are part of the

(41:07):
design and part of what's going on, but they don't they're not expected to
carry the load of the way tothe building. Interesting. Yeah, yeah,
I mean I think that makes sense. Right. I've seen some very
i mean some very interesting designs lately. You know, I'm picturing one billion.
I'm not sure where it's at exactly, I saw a picture of it,
but it's basically like almost a spiral. It starts to spiral on the

(41:28):
way up. And I mean I'mnot an architectural engineer, but I imagine
that that would be very hard tohave those walls as it spirals up to
be load bearing. So just veryinteresting, and I think you know,
true to your point, Hunter,I think you know that's how we're getting
some of these very interesting designs thesedays, is they've manufactured, they figured
out a way to have the loadbearing parts not be the walls, and

(41:51):
therefore, now you know, everybuilding can be far more iconic. There's
just one other thing that I wantto sort of talk about before we jump
to maybe our next section, whichis and we started talking about sort of
this competition between cities or comparing cities, and there's actually a way. There's
actually an index that's sort of used, at least in this side of the
world, in North America to sortof measure how well cities are performing see

(42:14):
each other. And this is somethingcalled the crane index. Hunter, do
you know what the crane index is? I believe it's a measure of how
many cranes are active in different citiesor something related to that. That's almost
exactly right. So it's from thiscompany called the Writer Levitt Bucknell Bucknell.
It's a construction organization and probably aconsulting firm, but they basically measure sort

(42:37):
of where cranes are at any givenquarter of the year. And so they've
created this sort of index where theyshow, you know, cities across sort
of really the Caribbean, Mexico,the United States, and Canada. So
there might be variations of this,you know, in other places as well,
but this is just for North America. And then they sort of show,
okay, where we sing an increasein cranes, where we sing a

(42:59):
crane sort of whole steady in theiraccount, and where we seeing a decrease
in cranes. And the idea isto show really what's the what's the economic
sort of how's the economies of theseindividual cities doing right, because the idea
is that if you have more cranesin your city, that means there's more
stuff being built, more tall buildings. Now, granted, a crane isn't
always used for a skyscraper. Infact, that's right, most of the

(43:21):
time they're not. But I thinkit's an interesting way of how we are
sort of using the symbology of buildingsto now be sort of also an economic
indicator of success and wealth. Andso, you know, they have a
fun map. You know, youcan you can go onto the website.
It's r LB dot com. Undertheir little insights section, you can click
on the map and you can sortof see, you know, hey,
you know Toronto has this many cranesversus you know, Vancouver, BC has

(43:44):
this many cranes. Right, Soit's a sort of a fun, fun
way to sort of, you know, measure cities. I think there are
some debate on whether it actually isa true indicator of a city's wealth or
success or economic vitality, but it'sdefinitely an interesting way that's sort of built
into sort of everything that we're talkingabout today. Yeah, there was something
else I read. There was areport that was generated by that organization that

(44:07):
we keep talking about, the otherCouncil on Tall Buildings and Urban next one,
right, and so in twenty fourteen, I think it was, they
published something called the Competition for theTall Skyscraper Implications for Global Ethics and Economics.
And Christopher Michaelson was the author ofthis, who I believe is trained
as a philosopher, And one ofthe observations that was made in this publication

(44:30):
is that that height share, youknow, the amount of tall buildings that
you have is more a leading indicatorof economic ambition than necessarily economic achievement.
So obviously there's a lot of wealthinvolved in building these things, but it
also reflects, according to this report, a lot of aspiration or economic development,

(44:51):
even more so than what's already beenachieved economically. So some of that
symbolic power is it falls in aspiration. Another thing that I wanted to mention
is that we've talked about this competition, you know for skyscrapers and the tallest
one, but also the number ofskyscrapers that a city has is also part
of that part of that profile ofbeing, you know, the prestige of

(45:16):
having lots of building the large skylinewith this kind of thing. And so
the statistics I have of February twentytwenty two, which was about a year
ago, fourteen cities in the worldhad more than one hundred skyscrapers. So
I'm one hundred skyscrapers is a lot, It's a lot. Yeah, there
are fourteen cities that met that characterizationthat by far the city with the most

(45:37):
skyscrapers is Hong Kong with five hundredand eighteen skyscrapers. Shenzhen, China with
three forty three is number two onthe list, and the New York City
with three hundred is the third onthe list. The only other city on
this list that is not in AsiaChicago, which has one hundred and thirty
five, and the rest of theseare either in China, United Arab Emirates

(45:59):
in Mumbai in particular, and thenKuala Lumpur, also Bangkok, Bangkok,
Thailand, and Jakarta, Indonesia.So it's interesting that these are the cities
that have also the highest number ofskyscrapers. Yeah, I think, you
know, we talked a little bitabout earlier about buildings that people might assume

(46:20):
are skyscrapers but aren't actually skyscrapers.You know, I use Phoenix as an
example, and you know, I'mthere's probably some people who you know,
would almost take a not maybe nota fence at us, but it would
just sort of be taken aback alittle bit. So that you mean,
my, my city's tall buildings aren'tskyscrapers. That's that's ludicrous, That's that's
silly, that's you know, wehave a very profound you know, pronounced

(46:42):
skyline. That's you know, youknow X y Z right, because a
lot, a lot gets built intothat right, that there's a lot of
you know, I made a veryclear point earlier today that you know,
this is not an episode about cities. However, skyscrapers and cities are are
bound together, and so there's alot of pride from your city within various
various aspect of your city, right, and so skyscrapers happen to be one
of those, and so sort ofhaving that number and having that amount is

(47:06):
probably a big point of pride fora lot of these cities. And this
is actually leading to I think maybeour next segment on the environmental impacts of
skyscrapers, because there's a definitely aconversation and density here. But before we
do that, it's time for forsome some ads, some of these lovely
things that people are going to tryand sell you. So we'll be right,
we'll be right back, and weare back. So we are just

(47:30):
going to sort of launch into maybeyou know, as as we reframe our
episodes to sort of our new name, this sort of final section will always
sort of I think, be basedaround the geographic impacts more specifically, right,
So we talk a lot about geographythroughout all of this, but really,
what you know, if if geographyis skyscrapers, and what is the
geography there? And so I havea couple of different points here to make.

(47:52):
And the first one is we sortof alluded to this as we were
talking about the amount of skyscrapers ineach city. You know, the dense
of US cities in particular is overallfairly low compared to it's, you know,
like cities in Europe and Asia andIndia and you know all these you
know, other places, and whatwe've done in the US is really quite
interesting. So a lot of UScities, if we look at the downtown

(48:15):
area, let's take you know,Houston, for example, Houston has a
number of skyscrapers. You know,it gets very dense in a very small
area, and then that density dropsand so it's really a very stark sort
of view of the city. Andand if you're not familiar with Houston,
LA has a very similar sort ofview where you can look at you can

(48:37):
sort of see this, you know, all these really tall buildings in a
really small area surrounded by a seaof one, two three story buildings.
And the reason why that I'm bringingthis up with the context of the United
States is that this has actually hada huge impact on sort of the land
use and the environmental sort of issuesthat we're dealing with a lot today.

(48:59):
And so we know, for example, that you know, density is better
for the environment. You know,people use less energy when they live in
a denser environment for all the thingsthat you would expect. Right if you're
living in a dense area, it'smore walkable, there's probably better transits,
so you're probably not gonna use yourcar very often. It's like sort of
a cascading motion. And there's anotherepisode in here somewhere to talk more more

(49:19):
about density, and maybe that's whenwe talk about cities them more specifically.
But the skyscraper, like you hadalluded to earlier, Hunter, they were
sort of built inside these very specificareas that were very specifically zoned for them,
which means the land value was veryhigh there, which means they can
build these really mammoth sort of skyscrapers. And it really starts, you know,
getting you thinking, especially as we'retalking about, you know, the

(49:42):
number of skyscrapers in the US andAsia. There was another area that was
kind of left out entirely, whichis Europe. And we'll talk a little
bit about that in a second,but it starts to get you thinking about,
well, if everywhere else within thecities was able to be denser,
would there really be a need forthese skyscrapers? And I think, and
obviously we don't know no, specificallywith respects to each region's geographic context,

(50:06):
but I would think no, rightjust for the fact of the land value
in these areas where they're building thesemega tall skyscrapers, WI probably wouldn't be
as highich means they probably wouldn't buildas tall as buildings, and there would
be more density everywhere, which meansyou wouldn't need to cramp so many people
into one small area for business orwhat have you. And that kind of
leads to sort of the next pointis that, well, our skyscrapers environmentally

(50:30):
beneficial, And from my research theanswer is actually no, they're not so.
According to a study out of theNature Journal, the conclusion reached by
researchers is that a chain of skyscrapersgenerates one hundred and forty percent more total
emissions during their service life compared withan area with lower buildings with the same
number of inhabitants. Right, Sothis is this is drawing it directly back

(50:52):
into sort of what we're talking aboutdensity. Right, So if you have
an area one square mile or oneacre whatever, get whatever fine area you
have, and you decide to crama thousand people into one building, one
tall building, that's going to takeup more energy to do that than if
you were to have area size butwith you know, six buildings that have

(51:13):
the same thousand people, for example. And a lot of this is due
to really this concept of embodied energy, and that is and again we've talked
all about this up to this point, but this is all the stuff that
goes into making these these really bigbuildings is a lot, right, So
we start thinking, we go backand we start thinking about the steel that's

(51:35):
required to build these, Right.Steel is an incredibly energy intensive material to
make, and you have to makeit in really mass quantities. There's still
a lot of concrete that goes intothese buildings as well. Oh my god,
Yeah, concrete. And yeah,so if you didn't know, concrete
is actually one of the as anindustry, one of the most carbon pollutant
industries in the world. I mean, it's really far up there in terms

(51:59):
of just how much it contributes tosort of just the global emissions. And
yeah, Hunter, you're right.You know, there's a lot of concrete
that's needed, you know, alot of foundations that need especially because a
lot of these buildings, you know, we've been talking a lot about how
how how far up they've been built, but they actually get built below too,
right, So you know, Idon't have any of the specific buildings

(52:19):
off the top of my head,but you know, as I was doing
my research, it was like,Okay, this building is you know,
one hundred stories tall and six storiesbelow, right, So it's it's a
total one hundred and six stories,it's just six of them are below And
when you do that, that requiresan incredible amount of concrete. That's aside
from all the other concrete that's neededfor the rest of the building, right,

(52:40):
because there's reinforced concrete that's used.So that's steel which is embedded within
the concrete which makes it stronger,able to handle more stress. So yeah,
it's absolutely something that's used extensively still, right, Yeah, And so
you can't you really can't separate almostthe emissions of the steel and concrete industry
from the skyscraper industry, right,because they're so linked and when we're talking

(53:02):
a lot about steel and concrete,but there's also you know, other things
glass. A lot of these buildingshave a lot of glass. Glass is
a also a varying energy intensive material. And I think we were talking about
the World Trade Center, the originalWorld World Trade Centers, which were basically
just a solid glass facade right basicallyup and down. Whereas you know,
if you were to look at asix story building, it's it is not

(53:23):
even half glass. It is mostlywhatever you know, wood frame or masonry
or whatever the material is, it'snot going to be a lot of glass.
And so there's just a lot thatgoes into this into skyst of heating
and cooling needs to be used onbuildings that have these glass facades for examples
exactly the yeah, so yeah,just carry on into the energy systems that

(53:45):
then are needed to power these buildings. So all of this is just getting
to sort of when I hinted atit earlier, which is, you know,
North America has a lot of skyscrapers, Asia has a lot of skyscrapers.
Europe has a lot of skyscrapers.So this is not say that there
aren't skyscrapers in Europe, but ifyou know, as we were running through
this astute listeners probably noticed, well, we didn't bring up we didn't bring

(54:06):
up you know, Paris skyscrapers,or London skyscrapers, or Berlin skyscrapers,
or or Madrid skyscrapers xyz. Theyhave them, but all of these cities
also happen to be pretty dense andtheir own right, and there's just not
been the same kind of need ordesire for them. And there's a whole
host of reasons that get built intothis beyond, but it really goes to

(54:27):
show that skyscrapers maybe aren't aren't thatnecessary if you have the right sort of
land use across your city. There'slots of ways to achieve density, of
course, and having high rise buildingswhich are ten or twelve or twenty,
I mean, I don't know.There's probably a way of configuring, you
know, how much energy is usedto construct something at which height and which
is most efficient. But it turnsout that the tallest buildings in the world

(54:52):
aren't necessarily the most efficient. Therewas another thing I was reading about that
suggested that, you know, COVIDhad this huge impact on the working world,
of course, right and a lotof people aren't working in offices anymore.
And skyscrapers, although are used formany different things, for residences to
some degree, restaurants, you know, there's other things as well, but

(55:14):
that office space is probably the numberone use of skyscrapers. So if people
aren't even going to work quite asmuch, it also suggests, you know,
what is the future of these reallytall buildings given the work home nature
of business these days, when onestudy suggested that tall buildings may increasingly have
more residential space, and whether thatchanges things the equation here is something that

(55:37):
remains to be seen. But youknow, in the contemporary situation right now
that we're still you know, goingthrough this pandemic, really that has an
impact on skyscrapers as well, right, No, absolutely, yeah, I
have I have something very similar inmy notes. Is like we're talking a
lot about density, and all ofa sudden, this game conflated with housing
and everything like that, and it'slike, well, most skyscrapers in the

(55:59):
US are not built for housing.That's not not all of them, right
that, There's definitely some that havea lot of housing, and then but
the majority of them have you know, are are intended for use with businesses,
and so when you're building these thingsalso just for businesses that you know,
what does that mean for the overallemissions and sort of the their overall
purpose, right, I think it'swrapped up into this and sort of well

(56:21):
is there you know, is isthis really necessary? You know, the
amount of energy that goes into them? Is it really necessary just for business
that to your point, Hunter mightnot even be needed today? And I
think I think to your I thinkyou're right that a lot of buildings and
we're talking a lot about you know, buildings now being rehabbed are retrofitted for
for residences and sort of this newera of needing more housing and needing less

(56:45):
office space. But there is onesort of area that we can start talking
about that is, you know,perhaps a little bit better in this regard,
and that that is this concept ofthe wooden skyscraper. So if if
we go back to sort of theearly part of this episode, we might
have you might have you might rememberthat we hinted as wooden skyscraper or wooden
buildings, you know, sort oftopping out it I think like five or
six stories, and that that isfor the simple fact that wood can only

(57:07):
bear so much weight before it justcollapses onto itself. But there is now
a new technology that sort of enableswood buildings to go much higher. And
this is something called cross laminated timberbuildings. And I have here there's a
there's a whole industry that's sort ofbeing built around it. But you know
it's a cross laminated timber is anengineered wood product that consists of layer of

(57:28):
kiln dried dimension timber that's oriented atsort of right angle, so it's sort
of like structurally fitting into each otherand essentially then like glued all around it.
Right, So if you think aboutsomething that's laminated, right, it's
like gos to so whole machine.It's piece of paper and it comes out
the other side and it's like thisnow plastic like sort of durable thing.
Right. That's kind of basically whatthey're doing with with it with with lumber

(57:50):
with timber. And what this allowsfor is this material, this this lumber
material that is still has sort ofthe flexibility of wood without the weight limits
attached to it because that was muchstronger. So it gets closer to steel
in that regard, and this isfar more energy efficient CLT timber or across

(58:10):
lime. Timber buildings are far moreenergy efficient than steel frame buildings because while
there's still an energy portion there,you're still obviously you need to cut down
trees and all this other stuff there. It's just the steel industry is very
energy intensive. Although this probably hasyou know, it probably uses a lot
of plastic, which, if youremember, we cover it pretty extensively in
our what if a plastic didn't existthat set? And so we don't need

(58:34):
to spend too much time here onsort of crosslamee a timbered building. But
I did have here in my notesthat the current tallest is a building called
the Ascent MKE building. It isin Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and it is
two hundred and eighty four feet tall, and it was built just in twenty
twenty two, and so that doesnot quite hit our marker for skyscraper,

(58:57):
right, four hundred ninety two feetis what is sort of technically record fired.
So it's still a couple hundred feetaway from that. However, if
you go back even five or tenyears across like manated timber buildings were were
just hitting ten stories tall, elevenstories tall, and so this is this
is I believe twenty four stories tall. So it's starting to get up there,
right, and I think we're goingto still see these buildings build taller
and taller, and that'll have someinteresting connotations for you know, what,

(59:20):
what is the skyscraper? And youknow, all this all these kinds of
definitions that might be coming down ourway as well as you know, maybe
there's a better and more efficient wayto build tall buildings for housing and maybe
even offices into the future. Andso with that, any final notes on
skyscrapers, hunter any final well,I mean I would return to this this

(59:42):
study that I was reading that Ihad me thinking, and it talked about
some of the ethical dimensions of buildingskyscrapers and that there's a quote here from
Christopher Michaelson. It reads, symbolicpower in the form of an iconic skyscraper
can be purchased unlike substantive progress onhuman well being measures. So you know,

(01:00:05):
there it's not to say that skyscrapersmight not have their role, but
there's an enormous amount of resources thatgo into building a very tall building,
and we could ask ourselves, isthere other way to use those resources?
And one example comes from the JettaTower itself, which we talked about earlier,
is if it were ever completed,it would become the tallest building in

(01:00:30):
the world a kilometer tall. Andit's being constructed in an area that experienced
extensive floods in twenty nineteen, whichcaused people to die a lot of damage
and it's basically related apparently in partbecause it lacked a basic drainage system.
And so here we're putting in thisincredible marvel of technology and engineering in a

(01:00:52):
place that doesn't really have basic drainagein which people are suffering from. So,
you know, the ethical implications ofthat all over the world is something
that we can consider. I'm notsure. I know, I don't have
all the answers, but posing thesekinds of questions I think is probably useful
for our consideration of where the futureof skyscraper should be heading. Yeah,

(01:01:13):
absolutely, I think. Yeah.We've talked a lot about the symbolism,
you know, the power and wealthprojection behind these and that's coming as as
everything does in a capitalist society orcapitalist world, is coming at the expense
of something else, right, Imean that's true for the US as well,
and we use Jeddah Tower but it'strue for the US as well.
When a big building is being builtin your city, you know there's a

(01:01:36):
lot of well it might be privatelyfunded in some capacity, there's probably also
a lot of municipal services and municipalor state dollars that are going into that
as well, and so it makesyou think, well, what is the
purpose of that building and what couldit be better spent on, because there's
a lot of other problems that citiesand states have that and one of them

(01:01:58):
is probably we don't have enough skyscrapers. Well, I mean maybe as a
final way to kind of get towardsit. Wrapping up point, and one
of the things I was reflecting on, and I don't know if you were
thinking about this, is the rolethat skyscrapers have in science fiction. Science
fiction is a way of talking aboutconcerns that people have about the world today

(01:02:21):
and then sort of hiding that wrappedup in a story about the distant future
and not so distant future. Andtwo of the movies that come to mind
where skyscrapers figured really prominently. Oneof them is Metropolis, which I'm not
sure if you're familiar with. Ithink a nineteen twenty nine film by Fritz
Lang made in Germany, and thebuildings. There's the hierarchy of powers at

(01:02:45):
the top of these buildings, andit's a city where planes are flying around
and everything, and it's sort ofset the template for a lot of more
contemporary films. And of course Ithink about Blade Runner when I think about
skyscrapers, and I think about movies, and you know, also the sort
of lack of power that people have. This is a world in which the

(01:03:06):
environment has been decimated, people tryingto get off the planet, and the
poorest people in both these films areat the bottom of the skyscrapers on the
ground level, and those with powerare sort of at the top of these
buildings, and that symbolizes their hierarchyand society as well. So it's interesting
to reflect on how fiction and sciencefiction in this case can give us some

(01:03:30):
food for thought for thinking about theactual world that we live in. Yeah,
I think that's a great thing tosort of end on. So Hunter,
you want to run through some playables, sure, I'm Hunter Shoby.
I'm a professor of geography at PortlandState University. I'm co author with David
Bannis of Portland as a cultural atlasand Upper Left Cities a cultural Atlas of

(01:03:52):
San Francisco, Portland at Seattle.Yeah, and once again, my name
is Jeff Gibson. You can findme on YouTube. That's YouTube dot com
slash a Little ass SiGe Geography byJeff, and you can find both Hunter
and me on as well as thispodcast, and that's Geography is Everything dot
substack dot com. There will besome sort of exclusive content coming that to
that community here pretty soon, Soif you really like what we're doing,

(01:04:12):
please go subscribe there. We wouldreally appreciate it in some way for us
to interact with you all a littlebit more. We have a couple of
really awesome episodes coming up after this, so just to give you all just
a little bit of a tease,and you know, we are working on
some episodes around sort of Geography isBeer, which would be really fun.
I think Hunter and I especially reallylove beer, so or at least I
really love beer. We have someYeah, we have some coming up here
on sort of regional dialects, whichI think will be a lot of fun

(01:04:35):
to explore. And then for allof you sports fanatics out there, we
are working on some soccer related episodesbecause probably more so than most sports,
soccer is truly geographic and scale inglobal scale, I should say, so.
We are really looking forward to that. But until next time, which

(01:04:55):
is just next week, we'll seeyou around. Thank you for listening.
With a little bit a com