As a European. Ouch. It's not like there's no economic activity in Europe so I wonder why that is? We don't like verticality?

Yes. We don't like verticality. That is actually true in much of Europe.

One reason for this comes from geography: Europe is further away from the equator than most other prosperous areas, e.g. US or China. This means that the sun shines diagonally and is particularly low in the winter. And if you build high towers, the neighbours will be deprived of direct sunlight.

Due to daylight norms, high buildings don't actually achieve any higher density.

When you look at Frankfurt they mostly achieve a lot of empty sterile space around them.

Really? This one is 1,082 feet tall. I mean long. :)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15847093

It would be fascinating to see some sort of multidimensional analysis of the different construction types in order to get a feel for the significance of skyscrapers vs. more distributed structures, etc.

Why might that be?

We don't need them

Because we have little growth and very conservative city planning.