Re:The Downside to Life in a Supertall Tower: Leaks, Creaks,...
by dionidium on Sunday February 07, 2021 @06:50AM
(#26054395)
> The enormous costs to build super talls would go much further in myriad other ways, even just by making a few tall or many regular size buildings.
Note that these supertalls only exist in the first place because it's artificially difficult to build regular-sized buildings in Manhattan. It's very unlikely anybody would have bothered building anything in this specific form if not for the onerous zoning codes the developers were skirting when they designed them.
More info: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-11/gaming-ne...
Re:The Downside to Life in a Supertall Tower: Leaks, Creaks,...
by tedunangst on Sunday February 07, 2021 @07:08AM
(#26054494)
I'm not sure that article supports your conclusion. They made oversized mechanical floors to evade height limits. They could have made normal sized floors and still complied with zoning regulations. If the zoning regulations had permitted denser buildings, it would still be just as tall, but with more interior floors. Making the building ultra tall was the point, not an accidental quirk of zoning.
Re:The Downside to Life in a Supertall Tower: Leaks, Creaks,...
by dionidium on Sunday February 07, 2021 @07:27AM
(#26054570)
Yes, of course they wanted the building to be tall. The claim is that it wouldn't be super-tall, skinny, and with so much empty space, if not for the particulars of NYC zoning law. If they were allowed to make a normally-proportioned building on an entire lot, then they most likely would have done that. But they aren't.
What “good” does a skyline do for society? The enormous costs to build super talls would go much further in myriad other ways, even just by making a few tall or many regular size buildings. Very far from progress if you as me.
Actually, I would take the construction of a novel building just to give views and prestige to less than one hundred families to be evidence of societal regression, since it can be used as a proxy for extreme wealth inequality.