The Skyscraper Race: Is America Done?

It's easy to look at the feats rising from Asia and the Middle East and wonder if North America will ever again host a "World's Tallest." The last time we held that title was in 1998, when Kuala Lumpur's twin Petronas Towers beat out Chicago's Sears Tower by a few meters. American developers, fueled by a renewed challenge - one that hadn't really been visited since the 1970s, and one that primarily existed in North America - began quickly working with architects to volley the ball back to Asia with something even taller. 

But a series of unfortunate events put a wrench in our efforts to further scrape the sky. Even before the dot.com crash, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the global housing crisis, 9/11 had devastated our nation and forced us to question the vulnerability that comes with reaching so high. 

New York's World Trade Center became North America's Tower of Babel.

By the time we started building again, the Burj Khalifa was slated to surpass the height of New York's Freedom Tower by nearly twice its proposed height. Buildings like Taiwan's Taipei 101 and those that seemed poised to at least briefly hold the title of "World's Tallest" were quickly relegated to a vast architectural catalog of skyscrapers roughly the height of the Sears Tower. 

Today, development in the United States has seemingly dropped out of the global height race, opting for unofficial local rivalries. When we do compete, it's New York versus Chicago, or Philadelphia and Los Angeles battling over who will become slightly taller than the rest. Comcast's Innovation and Technology Center will become an architectural symbol of Philadelphia's renaissance, but when it's mentioned in the press, it comes with the caveat, "tallest outside New York and Chicago."

Perhaps the tragedies and obstacles that kept us out of the race in the early 2000s didn't just make us question the vulnerability of building so tall, but also the practicality. In most major American cities, skyscrapers top out around 300 meters, roughly the height of Comcast Center and its upcoming partner. 

Using technology that hasn't fundamentally changed in more than one hundred and fifty years, most of the world's tallest skyscrapers still use the same Otis elevators invented in 1852. Until someone created a truly new technology to take us more than one hundred stories into the sky, elevator banks become clogged and traveling between floors begins eating into valuable business hours. 

With business becoming more mobile, it's often less remote. Tech geeks meander through suburban campuses on Segways and scooters in the Silicon Valley, tethered to tablets and smart phones. New project management methodologies born in the world of information technology are spreading from the West Coast throughout the rest of the world, and they require days filled with brainstorming sessions, sprint meetings, and most importantly, mobility.

Emails and texts are being hastily addressed while waiting in long lines for elevators. It's no surprise that the world's most successful technology companies still favor the sprawling suburban campus. 

In that regard it's easy to understand why American corporations have opted out of the international race for height. It's also easy to wonder if Asian countries, and more specifically, sprawling Middle Eastern cities really get skyscrapers. 

Born from a need during the Industrial Revolution, the perfection of Otis's elevator provided an answer. Cities like New York and Chicago finally had a way to cram as many people as possible into a finite amount of space by building really, really high. For those who invented the skyscraper, it wasn't a luxury, it was a solution. And with a renewed sense of urban living and employment, density is being brought back to cities like Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami by building up, not out.

But to developers in the Middle East, to those building the Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, skyscrapers straight out of the pages of the best science fiction novels are becoming a reality for something entirely different. While the floor count seems to have no ceiling in today's global skyscrapers, there is nothing technologically unique about the Kingdom Tower or the Burj Khalifa, except for purpose. Throwing practicality into the desert, Middle Eastern developers are scraping the sky to cater to an exclusive clientele, a global 1% with nothing but time on their hands, plenty to wait for an elevator.

For the United States, Canada, European nations, and other more pragmatic countries, we didn't quit the race, we're just waiting for technology to make something as tall as the Kingdom Tower make sense. When that happens, the game is back on. 

New York's World Trader Center wasn't the Tower of Babel. It made sense. It served its purpose, it was tragically destroyed, and it was rebuilt. In fact, the story of the Tower of Babel makes no mention of its destruction despite so many modern references. It was simply a towering city so large that chaos ensued and the tower was abandoned. I'm certainly not a Christian, but the analogy is historically apt, and much more attributable to cities a little bit closer to its namesake. To buildings like the Burj Khalifa, the Kingdom Tower, to building's that just don't make sense...yet.

Freedom Tower

Break out the Champaign, a panel of architects has officially named New York's Freedom Tower the tallest skyscraper in North America. The Council of Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat made the announcement, determining that the 400+ foot needle atop the building was an architectural element and not simply an antennae, allowing it to surpass Chicago's Willis Tower (which will forever be referred to as the Sears Tower).

Not everyone is thrilled about the decision. Chicago's Sears Tower is 1451 feet tall, while the roof at the Freedom Tower is at just 1368 feet. Determining the Freedom Tower's spire an architectural element is a gray area.

It's not new though. When the Chrysler Building was completed in 1930, it was expected to be the world's second tallest building, second to the Bank of Manhattan Trust building. At the last moment, a 125 foot tall spire was placed atop the Chrysler Building, making it the world's tallest building until it would be topped a year later by the Empire State Building.

Despite hosting a number of "World's Tallest," New York City did not invent the skyscraper. Because the construction technique that allowed buildings to scrape the sky was developed in Chicago, the Windy City is credited as the birthplace of the skyscraper.

Philadelphia, even with the Gentleman's Agreement that didn't allow a building to surpass William Penn's hat, held the honor of the World's Tallest with City Hall for seven years. To this day, Philadelphia City Hall is still the world's tallest masonry building, and given the costly construction, one unlikely to ever be surpassed.

Freedom Tower's position as the nation's tallest is in part symbolic, precisely at 1776 feet, it pays homage to the nation's founding. It also brings along with it an iconic end to the recovery following the tragic events of September 11, 2001.

Whether or not Chicago decides to challenge New York City by building an even taller skyscraper remains to be seen. The city is certainly capable. But it won't erase the Freedom Tower's significance which is largely its location and what it represents.

Skyscrapers across the Middle East and Asia have far surpassed anything constructed in America, any while they're symbolic of Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and China's symbolic efforts, they're the product of poor labor conditions and exploitation.

The Freedom Tower represents more than its architects, developers, and builders, it represents an ideal, perseverance, and innovation created here, in the United States, that allowed buildings around the globe to touch the clouds.

Greater Philadelphia World Trade Center

You know what's scary about walking across the Ben Franklin Bridge to Camden? Camden.

It's a bizarre place, to put it nicely.

What's more terrifying than the Camden your faced with when exiting the New Jersey side of the Ben Franklin bridge is the Camden just on the other side.

That could change, although I emphasize "could."

Remember Philadelphia's proposed World Trade Center on the Delaware River? It found its way into the dreams of hopeful skyscraper nerds far after its inception and lingered long after it was dead, despite the fact that it was a downright ugly complex that looked like the product of a 1995 K-hole.

Well Camden's Waterfront Renaissance Associates haven't given up on the idea.

Deeming Philadelphia's Delaware River "no longer appropriate" (for no apparent reason), the Greater Philadelphia World Trade Center established in 2002, is eyeing the former site of Camden's Riverfront State Prison.

It's not a horrible idea. Philadelphia's World Trade Center is currently on JFK Boulevard. Despite available land in the West Market vicinity, it's pricy and development costs in the city can be prohibitive, particularly for projects of this size.

What Philadelphia's northern Delaware River once offered in the early 2000s, Camden now holds: cheap land and an eager municipality.

Camden's location in its own right is iffy, but its home to Cooper Medical, Rutgers, and the NJ State Aquarium. Despite the World Trade Center's proposed height, it appears to be largely suburbanized, the only architectural model that seems to work in NJ.

It's highly speculative at this point, but given Camden's national reputation it's not likely a site to be hounded by neighborhood opposition.

The New Delaware Avenue

Had it been built, today's economy would have probably left it a ghost town, but what a beautiful ghost town it would have been. It's a shame that of all the grand proposals for Northern Liberties' waterfront area, neighbors managed to NIMBY away all but the most poorly designed of the various proposals. And even in the case of these two, opposition fought so hard against an inevitable casino that they wound up with a suburban warehouse instead of a well designed tower with a landscaped marina.

In a time of optimistic real estate gambling, the post industrial wasteland that is Delaware Avenue was to be the site of a new, and concentrated business, residential, and entertainment district. With skyscrapers rivaling Center City's, the redevelopment of this concrete jungle of vacant lots, rotting warehouses, and abandoned cars promised that Northern Liberties could be more than a hipster's wet dream of ironic blight.

Bridgeman's View

A World Trade Center would redefine this corridor as an international business hub, while sleek, sky scraping condos would tag Northern Liberties as an elite address for Philadelphia's nouveau riche. Hotels and casinos would attract young and old, and Delaware Avenue would become our region's premier address for glitz, glamor, and excess.

Oh, how times change. While just a few years ago, one could envision such a scenario being today's reality, sadly, Delaware Avenue remains a blighted artery, and home to the homeless.

Sugarhouse Casino

Waterfront Square, a poorly designed condominium complex that suburbanizes Delaware Avenue as a gated community that disobeys the grid, is two towers short of its original plan. Developers are struggling to unload the remaining units in the recently completed, and stunted, tower.

Sugarhouse Casino draws a crowd but pays no respect to its surroundings. Like a pig in a prom dress, a large warehouse has been dressed up with a plastic facade. With development tied up in town meetings and neighborhood opposition for over a year, dwindling resources and a sagging economy eliminated a hotel component that redefined the area's skyline and balanced Waterfront Square's jarring presence.

Trump Tower

While many in the neighborhood continue to demonize the projects, the surrounding area and waterfront remain neglected and unused by those who fought so fiercely to preserve them. Certainly the addition of Trump Tower and Bridgeman's View, as well as others, would have led to a much worse real estate situation, one Philadelphia has weathered quite well compared to cities like Miami or Atlanta. But no NIMBY can claim their protest was due to some divine foresight.

While it may have turned into a ghost town, it would have created a badly needed, urban infrastructure in a suffering part of town, one that could save this area from the same mistakes made in South Philadelphia in which a similar landscape was redeveloped into an asphalt oasis of suburban shopping.

Given the current economy and the present state of the neighborhood, it's unlikely this stretch of Delaware Avenue will be thrown any developmental optimism again. If this NIMBY has the foresight it likes to claim, right now they are seeing strip malls and fast food drive-ins.