Robert Edwards left the following comment:
I have never been able to understand why, in [the USA] which is largely uninhabited, it should be the birthplace of the skyscraper.
That's easy.
People are social beings, and benefit economically by being in close proximity to each other. This doesn't necessarily just mean close geographical proximity, i.e. telephone and Internet bring people closer together; in terms of £ cost/ton of goods transported, China is the same distance from London as Liverpool is (just the lead times are longer); and the time taken to travel from A to B is as important as the physical distance, but geographical proximity is still the most important. Let's call these 'centripetal forces'.
Conversely, people like having a bit of space to themselves, i.e. their own house and garden, a view over undeveloped nature etc. Let's call these 'centrifugal forces'. Each individual is slightly different, so we all make the trade-off between the two extremes, which is expressed in terms of land values or house prices; for the same amount of money you can afford a small flat in the City centre, a semi-detached out in the suburbs or a farmhouse with a couple of acres out in the middle of nowhere (ignoring artificial restrictions like planning permission and natural features).
Businesses are far more driven by centripetal forces, as they like to have the largest pool of potential customers and potential employees, and being in a densely populated area enables far more specialisation, i.e. efficiency. If you are good at repairing 1960s Fender guitars and nothing else, then you can make a living in a large city, but you'd starve to death in a small village, for example. Add to that the fact that some company bosses and many architects have a macho dream of having (built) the biggest skyscraper. This also leads to the related concept of agglomeration, the ever increasing density is self-perpetuating because all the extra economic activity and specialisation feeds off itself.
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So long before skyscrapers were invented, we noticed that town and village centres were more densely populated than the countryside, there were more two or three storey buildings, smaller gardens etc; being able to build a tower block or sky scraper near the middle of a town, in the middle of a goood transport hub is merely the logical extension of this.
We also note that cities the world over look much the same, the physical size of the hinterland is nigh irrelevant, because the centripetal forces (in modern economies) far outweigh the centrifugal ones. In fact, you could argue that the bigger the hinterland then the bigger the overall population that country or area can support and so the bigger and more densely populated the urban centres.
So the skyline of Manhattan looks much the same as the skyline of Hong Kong. If Manhattan snapped off and fell into the sea, then its erstwhile residents would not move to the thousands of small towns and villages sprinkled across the USA, they'd just move into the new buildings that would spring up across the Hudson or the East River. And if China decided to transfer control of millions of acres of hinterland to Hong Kong, then very few Hong Kong residents would leave the city and become a farmer.
Similarly, if half the surface area of a relatively undeveloped agricultural country slid into the ocean, were flooded or occupied by a hostile power, the residents and refugees would populate the remaining bit more densely - but they wouldn't start building cities and skyscrapers, they would just have smaller farms (or the dispossessed would be forced to work as labourers on farms belonging to the lucky ones), but the population would still be spread at the same density across the whole remaining country.
I hope that helps!
Forbidden Bible Verses — Genesis 42:18-28
7 hours ago
16 comments:
All of what you say, plus the invention of the functioning - and provably fail-safe - elevator (aka lift).
L, lifts help, but I've seen plenty of buildings of six storeys or more which were built long before lifts were invented. Climbing all those stairs was a bit of a shag, but so was walking a few miles.
MW Generally speaking 6 stories was about the maximum workable before lifts were developed. Plus skyscrapers needed high speed lifts, for the same reason, getting to work just takes too long and too much effort. The ivention of the elevator and especillay the high speed elevator was critical to the success, or even just the viability of skyscrapers. It's a Well Known Fact.
L, for sure and yes, but lifts were only invented because people worked out how to build ever higher skyscrapers and tower blocks in city centres, and they only did that because of the benefits of agglomeration. It wasn't as if somebody invented lifts and then worked out what to use them for and then waited for economic forces to bring cities into being.
"Generally speaking 6 stories was about the maximum workable before lifts were developed." Then explain the Old Town in Edinburgh.
Yes, I was thinking about the Old Town too. But I seem to remember being told while on a walking tour of the "oldest skyscrapers in Europe" that
a) they built up because of a drastic lack of buildable land
b) The height limit in the absence of structural steel is the crush pressure that stone can bear. Buildings in the Auld Toon were at the absolute limit for mediaeval technology. Something like 13 or 14 storeys.
The big reason that we suddenly saw skyscrapers in the late 19th century was the sudden availability of cheap steel for creating skyscraper frames. It's much stronger than stone so nations with access to the technology to create cheap steel were suddenly able to build very tall buildings. And as a result of that the need arose for safe lifts. So within a very short time they were developed.
Of course skyscrapers only sprang up on plots with high land value but this would have happened years earlier if the Bessemer/Open Hearth processes for steel-making had been invented. Since the USA was one of the high tech nations, had some very high value sites, and wasn't overburdened with planning laws, it was one of the first to have skyscrapers. It is also probably no coincidence that skyscrapers tended to be built in cities that had Georgist mayors at the time.
Wikipedia has a good article on skyscrapers if you want to know more about the history of skyscrapers. I found the section on Roman and mediaeval skyscrapers particularly interesting. Who would have thought it ?
Whoa. Steel (or at last iron framed) buildings long predate lifts. In fact thinking about it the building our office is in is made with a cast iron from and dates from early 19 century.
Steel frames are stronger than stone on a weight for weight basis. You can build lighter structures higher. You may still use stone for the foundations.
So, you've now got the ability to build high buildings but how do you make them useable? You perfet the lift. Then hey presto off you go.
BTW I love those old photos of the building for NY skyscrapers where you have steel erectors sitting out on single members high above the street, having lunch.
Me too. Those are great pictures.
Frank Lloyd Wright ,who knew a thing or two, put it all down to high land values and was a proponent of Henry George.
He thought American houses should be flatter to the ground with wide eaves for shade and developed a whole lot of so-called Prairie Houses some of which like the Robie House(?)were in the middle of Chicago.
He went on to develop a George-ish plan for a Broad Acre City where everybody was spread out on enormous plots.
I have often wondered why American Georgists (than whom nobody is more up themselves) don't centre all their efforts on getting some of this plan built as something more comprehensible than their constipated arguments on landcafe.Broadacre City was also supposed to run on Gesellian economic lines.Crikey!How cool can you get?
Lola is not getting the respect he is due for his point about the Otis safety lift (the system still in use).It did make a huge difference as did changing methods of construction:early skyscrapers had masonry walls at the bottom twenty foot thick to support the weight up top which crammed out any useable space.
DBC, of course the land values are higher, I was trying to explain WHY densities are higher in town centres, i.e. because of these 'centripetal' forces. The facts that
a) land values are higher and
b) people build sky scrapers
merely follow on from this.
...the Otis safety lift (the system still in use).
Bring back Paternoster elevators I say. Much more fun.
DNA, fun but scary! Have you ever been over the top in one?
Nothing to do with people being social animals. Sky scrapers are just due to land value. There are no sky scrapers in rural areas or small towns as the land value is so low there is no point. Where land value is high i.e. Central London, New York then fitting as much space on the smallest parcel of land makes sense, so you build high.
Anon. Not quite if I remember when I return from my hols I'll take a picture of a hideous one in dear old rural Suffolk. Result of epic planning failure.....!
Anon, sky scrapers are a result of land values, but sky scrapers are also a result of these 'centripetal forces' (humans are social animals, businesses do best when they can draw on a large pool of potential employees and potential customers) and the land values are in turn a result of the centripetal forces.
You can also say that because of agglomeration, it's the skyscrapers that drive land values even higher by allowing the centripetal forces to develop, in a virtuous circle.
But it's the centripetal forces that come first, this is basic human nature, and land values and/or sky scrapers are merely the results of collective or of individual human efforts respectively.
There's a Paternoster in Northwick Park Hospital. Staff only. Went over the top and under the bottom. Boring. There was no light anyway so I couldn't see anything.
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