Meh, I disagree that "the tallest" somehow represents human progress. Heck, the whole point of this article is how the tower is completely incongruent with the rest of its surroundings, and there was a good comment about how much of this super-luxury real estate is essentially an export product that NY sells to foreign oligarchs.
I agree and I disagree. I agree that it is disappointing New York waited so long to change its zoning laws to allow/encourage development - a huge, growing city like NYC needs more housing to remain affordable (ahem, San Francisco). This is a great interactive feature from the nytimes on how Mayor Bloomberg really kickstarted the development boom of the 2000s:
http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2013/08/18/reshaping-new...
On the other hand, tallest building is a terrible metric for progress. Buildings get exponentially more expensive as they get taller, leading to a less affordable city. These 104 units cost more than a billion dollars to develop, locking out all but the wealthiest people.
New York City has tons of underdeveloped but convenient land, like in Long Island City and Downtown Brooklyn. We should (and are) developing in those kinds of areas. A better metric of progress would be the number of people who can live in the city while keeping a sane commute.
Not sure why I was downvoted for pointing out that it isn't the tallest building in NYC. The tallest building in NYC is 1 WTC, which is almost 400' taller than this building, and is also the tallest building in the Western hemisphere.
It's reasonable to believe that "the building where you can ascend the furthest" is taller than "the building which would first puncture a descending dirigible".
The formal definition of "Height to Architectural Top" from the CTBUH requires 5 footnotes and a committee to decide whether the top features of a building are "architectural" or not.
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[ 10.9 ms ] story [ 242 ms ] threadWe have many great ideas for many new things but lack the political will to carry them out: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/0... .
On the other hand, tallest building is a terrible metric for progress. Buildings get exponentially more expensive as they get taller, leading to a less affordable city. These 104 units cost more than a billion dollars to develop, locking out all but the wealthiest people.
New York City has tons of underdeveloped but convenient land, like in Long Island City and Downtown Brooklyn. We should (and are) developing in those kinds of areas. A better metric of progress would be the number of people who can live in the city while keeping a sane commute.
The formal definition of "Height to Architectural Top" from the CTBUH requires 5 footnotes and a committee to decide whether the top features of a building are "architectural" or not.
And who put them in charge, anyway?