One of the most interesting things about skyscrapers and high-rises is their competitive aspects.
The Empire State Building, The Burj Khalifa, and other tall buildings were built, in part, to say to the rest of the world: "Look what we can do!"
There hasn"t just been competition between countries, either - there has been some competition within the United States too!
In this infographic, we take a look at the tallest buildings of each state. How tall would a state stand, based on its tallest building? Which states have the most high-rise buildings? What are most skyscrapers used for?
The United States has some of the world’s tallest skyscrapers, but their distribution is extremely uneven. Today’s infographic comes from Highrises.com, and it covers the tallest building in each state.
As Visual Capitalist"s Jeff Desjardins explains, New York City alone has 6,229 highrises – more than the next nine cities combined, including Chicago, Los Angeles, Honolulu, San Francisco, Houston, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Miami, and Dallas.
Surprisingly, multiple states don’t have a single building over 200 feet (61 m) tall. The tallest building in Vermont is an 11-story apartment building called Decker Towers. South Dakota is nearly as quaint – the CenturyLink Tower in Sioux Falls is the tallest building in the state, but it’s also only 11 stories tall.
TOP TEN LIST: THE TALLEST STATES
Here is the building that tips the scale for each of the ten “tallest” states:
TOP TEN LIST: THE SHORTEST STATES
Here is what ranks as the tallest building for the “shortest” ten states (also includes D.C.):
WHAT IS THE TALLEST BUILDING IN EACH STATE?
Not surprisingly, about 76% of these highrises are office buildings, with one of every three named after a bank. However, the tallest buildings in some of states have pretty unique purposes. The tallest habitable building in D.C., for example, is the lengthily-named Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, which is also the largest Roman Catholic church in North America.
The tallest building in Nevada is The Palazzo Resort Hotel Casino in Las Vegas. Meanwhile, the respective State Capitol buildings of North Dakota and West Virginia tower above any other skylines in those states.
As Goldman Sachs illustrates in the following chart, China was head, shoulders, knees, and toes above the aggregate of the rest of the world in terms of skyscraper completions in 2016...
Could record-setting skyscrapers signal economic over-expansion and a misallocation of capital?
EWN Interactive, a subscription service focused on technical analysis, thinks so. The following infographic follows the “Skyscraper Curse” through six different market tops and subsequent crashes over the past century.
It is gigantic in size, so please click here or the below image to access the legible version:
EWM Interactive sums up the infographic with these words:
In the market, extreme optimism results in price bubbles. One of the real-life manifestations of extremely positive social mood is the construction of enormous buildings. Market tops and skyscrapers often seem to emerge simultaneously, because both phenomena are the result of the illusion of infinite prosperity.
But extreme psychological conditions do not last very long. That is the reason why record-breaking buildings, whose construction starts during a market bubble, are often completed after the bubble’s collapse.
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In January we noted a perfect example of the smoke-and-mirror-ness of China"s credit-fueled expansion, as a 27-storey high-rise building which was completed on November 15th 2015 was just demolished, "having been left unused for too long."
And just this week, another illustration of Keynesian perfection as China created, then destroyed 19 massive structures, to make room for an even bigger skyscraper. The epic explosion that took place in Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province, leveled 19 seven to 12-story structures in a controlled demolition, the South China Morning Post newspaper reported, citing local media. The city authorities are planning to demolish at least 32 buildings to make way for a new business center that will reportedly feature a 707-meter tall skyscraper, which is to be one of the tallest buildings in the world.
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The silver-lining - now workers can clean up the mess, dig a bigger hole... and fill that in - all in the name of Keynesian "growth."
