skyline density rank

[blockbuster]

okay people i would like to know your opinions on which CBD has the most skyline density from 1 to 10.Please don't include New York...

[PghUSA]

why no NYC? To be honest though NYC I wouldn't think would be in the top 3 or so, they have TONS of scrapers but the area is pretty expansive as well.

Pittsburgh I bet would rank pretty high Skyscrapers.com which although spotty in some city rankings is pretty accurate with metro Pittsburgh (thanks to my constant emails to them). Rating us last I checked at 176 scrapers almost all (id say 150 or so of them) were in the CBD this only for an area of about 20 or 25 square blocks!

Interested in hearing about other cities as well.

[cheeriokid61]

NYC is definately in the top three. Yes, it covers a large area, but there are like 3000 skyscrapers. That's a lot.

[hood]

NYC is definately in the top three. Yes, it covers a large area, but there are like 3000 skyscrapers. That's a lot.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Actullay, according to Emporis, there are, in New York:

Completed - 5,458

Under reconstruction - 21

Under demolition - 2

Under Construction - 104

Total - 5,585

Plus - 21 approved and 53 proposed

Thats the number of buildings either over 12 floors or confirmed to be over 115 ft.

[cheeriokid61]

I stand corrected, but in a good way, I believe.

[RiversideGator]

NYC is the most dense city in America, without rival. I think we should be arguing over numbers 2 through ... I would say Chicago is #2, followed by Boston and Philadelphia.

[ironchapman]

San Francisco is the second most dense in America. Think about it...750,000 in 48 sq. mi. onlym about 30 of which are land and livable.

[Topher1]

^ The question is skyline, NOT population. In this case, SF is still probably #3 (behind NYC and Chicago), as its financial district is rediculously dense with skyscrapers.

[TheBostonian]

I'd say that of the American cities with significant skylines, there are two categories of density which depend on whether the city has a significant subway and/or commuter rail network that circulate people in and out of its CBD.

Category A: Significant skylines with higher density

(not necessarily in any order)

New York

Chicago

Boston

Philadelphia

San Francisco

Category B: Significant skylines with lower density

Observe, using google or msn satellite maps, that some of these cities have surface parking lots inside their CBD

Houston

Dallas

Atlanta: Either despite its subway or because the system is too small

Charlotte

Detroit

Los Angeles

I would need to look at Seattle and otehr cities to put it in one of these categories. But since this is quite unscientific, there are bound to be exceptions.

[AvianKeahi]

To get more of an objective assessment, probably the simplest and most obvious formula might be to divide the total Central Business District office and residential square footage by the "official" total area encompassed by that CBD. Oncor International keeps track of office footage in all major markets. I don't know where you could find residential footage though.

The resulting answer could be expressed as a simple ratio of Construction footage per square mile. e.g., if a mythical City#1 had 25 million square feet of office and residential spread over 1.5 square miles, the answer would be 16.7 million square feet per square mile. City#2 might have 39 million square feet in 4.7 square miles, which would then be about 8.3 million square feet per mile. City #1 would be "twice as dense" than City #2, though the second one would have far more buildings.

This of course doesn't take into account the varying street right-of-ways, parking lots and parklands in different cities, and it's probably way too generalized. In reality each city has varying densities of buildings depending on the criteria one selects. One small part of a downtown might be crammed with towers while a few blocks away it might be all surface lots. The formula above is then much too simplistic!

[PghUSA]

On Skyline NYC (because you are including ALL scrapers in the city not just the ones in midtown to downtown) NYC covers 303 sq. miles that is about 18 skyscrapers per square mile. Downtown Pittsburgh has 100+ (150 for the whole city) skyscrapers, over an area that is only 0.8 Square Miles.

NYC=18 per square mile

Pittsburgh=100+ per square mile

It would be more accurate to ONLY count the skyscraper centers of downtown and midtown and not the whole city land area for NYC, anybody have the landarea stat for ONLY southern and central Manhattan?

That being said though Pittsburgh is one of the most dense if not the most dense skyscraper city in the country for a Central Business District.

[Recchia]

On Skyline NYC (because you are including ALL scrapers in the city not just the ones in midtown to downtown) NYC covers 303 sq. miles that is about 18 skyscrapers per square mile.  Downtown Pittsburgh has 100+ (150 for the whole city)  skyscrapers, over an area that is only 0.8 Square Miles.

NYC=18 per square mile

Pittsburgh=100+ per square mile

It would be more accurate to ONLY count the skyscraper centers of downtown and midtown and not the whole city land area for NYC, anybody have the landarea stat for ONLY southern and central Manhattan?

That being said though Pittsburgh is one of the most dense if not the most dense skyscraper city in the country for a Central Business District.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Manhattan island is 23 square miles, and you should probly count all of it, since even way uptown (Harlem, the Heights) there are still a lot of highrise apartment buildings.

[PghUSA]

Manhattan Island is fine for me, really any way you want to split it up, just realize though that the numbers mentioned above for NYC were for all 5 boroughs, Queens, Brooklyn, even Staten Island have a few dozen if not a few hundred structures above 11 floors. You have to revise the # of skyscrapers if you are ONLY counting Manhattan (true maybe its only a 5% or 8% drop but you can't count a skyscraper on Staten Island for Manhattans land area).

Pittsburgh I think is definetly top 3 with 100+ skyscrapers per square mile, if not #1.

[hood]

On Emporis, there is no way to seperate the low and high-rise buildings by burrough except by hand counting them, there are however a total of 5,212 building on Manhatten, almost all of them appear to be completed high rise buildings, at the VERY LEAST 4,500. On Staten Island, there are so few buildings their easy to count, 11 high rises.

In Detroit, Downtown is approx. 1 sq. mile and there are, accoriding to Emporis, 173 high rise buildings downtown, with a total of 240 high-rises in the city. In Pittsburg, Emporis does not list a downtown, but has a disrict called "The Golden Triangle" where two rivers interesect (I'm guessing thats downtown?), it has 121 high rises in it out of 175 total high-rises in Pittsburg.

[PghUSA]

Those are some good stats, you did forget the "h" though

Golden Triangle is the CBD for Pittsburgh, 121 is more then I expected but these are still standing structures?

NYC if my math is right (well New York County) is 226.6 scrapers/sq. mile.

So now I guess it is up to 121/sq. mile or really (since Pittsburgh's is only 0.8 sq. miles) 151.25/sq. mile in Pittsburgh.

That's amazing about Detroit. are you sure thats just one square mile? If so that's pretty impressive.

[hood]

Well, according to people from Detroit it's only 1 sq. mi. And these are all of the buildings listed, when I have more time I may try and count the number of completed, maybe later tonight. There shouldn't be a very big difference for comparison, there may be 40-50 less buildings for Detroit and 20-30 less for Pittsburgh, at one point Detroit had an extremely dense downtown, and still has some of the best Art Deco skyscrapers around, I think throughout the city about 50 highrises have been tore down, only a handful have been replaced by other highrises, most with empty land or parking lots.

[blockbuster]

http://www.emporis.com/en/bu/sk/st/sr/?

[TheBostonian]

US cities, from the emporis list:

They have a very interesting weighted point system. Good find, Blockbuster.

New York

Chicago

Houston

Honolulu

Los Angeles

Dallas

Atlanta

San Francisco

Philadelphia

Miami

Seattle

Boston

Minneapolis

Denver

Pittsburgh

Las Vegas

Detroit

Aventura

Miami Beach

New Orleans

Jersey City

Cleveland

Charlotte

[Plasticman]

I'd say that of the American cities with significant skylines, there are two categories of density which depend on whether the city has a significant subway and/or commuter rail network that circulate people in and out of its CBD.

Category A: Significant skylines with higher density

(not necessarily in any order)

New York

Chicago

Boston

Philadelphia

San Francisco

Category B: Significant skylines with lower density

Observe, using google or msn satellite maps, that some of these cities have surface parking lots inside their CBD

Houston

Dallas

Atlanta: Either despite its subway or because the system is too small

Charlotte

Detroit

Los Angeles

I would need to look at Seattle and otehr cities to put it in one of these categories.  But since this is quite unscientific, there are bound to be exceptions.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Boston should be in second category. Charlotte shouldn't be in the same category as those other cities. A third category would include Charlotte. Now if the proposed projects get built in Charlotte, that might bring it up a lot. They sure look lik they're about to explode.

[facilities man]

Did anyone else notice....?

Miami #10 on the list Aventura #18 and Miami Beach #19.

Not sure why they're rated separately since all are within site of each other. Must be because they are separate municipalities. However, they all contribute to the same desity of buildings and overall skyline.

[PghUSA]

Does anyone else see the problem with the weighted list from emporis?

Houston has skyscrapers well outside of what one would consider "downtown" Miami as well, if you want to talk about metroplex or even entire municipality (some are almost one and the same like Houston) that is fine, but strictly for the "downtown core" like Manhattan or Pittsburgh's downtown etc. those rankings will not give us much help. Also another stumbling block in those rankings is that the city of Houston is spread almost as wide as the populated parts of Dade County and yet Miami does not get to claim Aventura or Miami Beach or for that matter the 12 floor condo in Hialeah.

My vote is check the "downtown" section or sections of each major city on emporis and make the tally that way. The Williams tower although in the city of Houston can in no reasonable way be considered part of the "downtown skyline". Those emporis rankings list though includes Williams, not fair if you ask me.