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dash
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 Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2007 6:24 pm Post subject: Skyscraper Index |
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The real heyday of the skyscraper age (buildings more than 150 meters tall) was the late 1920s and early 1930s: The Empire State was completed in 1931, and The Chrysler Building in 1930, just after the crash, and at the outset of The Great Depression. Neither building was surpassed until the completion of The World Trade Center in 1970. The 1970s was the worst decade for stocks since the 1930s.
Between 2001 and 2012 almost as many skyscrapers will be built as in the whole of the 20th century.
Dubai, from 2 skyscrapers in 1999 to 90 in 2012. Increase 4,400%
Miami, from 5 skyscrapers in 1999 to 71 in 2012. Increase 1,320%
Las Vegas, from 2 skyscrapers in 1999 to 27 in 2012. Increase 1,250%
London, from 2 skyscrapers in 1999 to 24 in 2012. Increase 1,100%
Important market top in 2012? |
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HenryTo
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| Posted: Sun Aug 07, 2011 11:05 pm Post subject: |
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The Saudis are now at it:
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World's tallest tower to go up in Saudi in 5 years
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — The investment company headed by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal says it plans to complete the world's tallest tower in just over five years time.
The Kingdom Holding Co. did not say Sunday when work would begin on the Kingdom Tower.
The $1.2 billion tower will be roughly two-thirds of a mile (1 kilometer) high. It is part of a $20 billion mega project on the outskirts of the Red Sea city of Jiddah.
The tower will be built by the Saudi Binladen Group construction conglomerate. It will cost $400 million and feature a Four Seasons hotel, luxury condominiums and offices that encompass around 5.4 million square feet.
Currently, Burj Khalifa in Dubai is the world's tallest tower at 2,717 feet (828 meters). |
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HenryTo
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| Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2011 11:31 am Post subject: |
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Love the Atlantic article. Thanks for posting!
| Quote: | IT’S A PITY that so few ordinary people can afford to live in central Paris or Manhattan, but France and the U.S. will survive. The problems caused by arbitrarily restricting height in the developing world are far more serious, because they handicap the metropolises that help turn desperately poor nations into middle-income countries. The rules that keep India’s cities too short and too expensive mean that too few Indians can connect, with each other and with the outside world, in the urban places that are making that poor country richer. Since poverty often means death in the developing world, and since restricting city growth ensures more poverty, it is not hyperbole to say that land-use planning in India can be a matter of life and death.
Mumbai is a city of astonishing human energy and entrepreneurship, from the high reaches of finance and film to the jam-packed spaces of the Dharavi slum. All of this private talent deserves a public sector that performs the core tasks of city government—like providing sewers and safe water—without overreaching and overregulating. One curse of the developing world is that governments take on too much and fail at their main responsibilities. A country that cannot provide clean water for its citizens should not be in the business of regulating film dialogue.
The public failures in Mumbai are as obvious as the private successes. Western tourists can avoid the open-air defecation in Mumbai’s slums, but they can’t avoid the city’s failed transportation network. Driving the 15 miles from the airport to the city’s old downtown, with its landmark Gateway of India arch, can easily take 90 minutes. There is a train that could speed your trip, but few Westerners have the courage to brave its crowds during rush hour. In 2008, more than three people each working day were pushed out of that train to their death. Average commute times in Mumbai are roughly 50 minutes each way, which is about double the average American commute.
The most cost-effective means of opening up overcrowded city streets would be to follow Singapore and charge more for their use. If you give something away free, people will use too much of it. Mumbai’s roads are just too valuable to be clogged up by ox carts at rush hour, and the easiest way to get flexible drivers off the road is to charge them for their use of public space. Congestion charges aren’t just for rich cities; they are appropriate anywhere traffic comes to a standstill. After all, Singapore was not wealthy in 1975, when it started charging drivers for using downtown streets. Like Singapore, Mumbai could just require people to buy paper day licenses to drive downtown, and require them to show those licenses in their windows. Politics, however, and not technology, would make this strategy difficult.
Mumbai’s traffic problems reflect not just poor transportation policy, but a deeper and more fundamental failure of urban planning. In 1991, Mumbai fixed a maximum floor-to-area ratio of 1.33 in most of the city, meaning that it restricted the height of the average building to 1.33 stories: if you have an acre of land, you can construct a two-story building on two-thirds of an acre, or a three-story building on four-ninths of an acre, provided you leave the rest of the property empty. In those years, India still had a lingering enthusiasm for regulation, and limiting building heights seemed to offer a way to limit urban growth.
But Mumbai’s height restrictions meant that, in one of the most densely populated places on Earth, buildings could have an average height of only one and a third stories. People still came; Mumbai’s economic energy drew them in, even when living conditions were awful. Limiting heights didn’t stop urban growth, it just ensured that more and more migrants would squeeze into squalid, illegal slums rather than occupying legal apartment buildings.
Singapore doesn’t prevent the construction of tall buildings, and its downtown functions well because it’s tall and connected. Businesspeople work close to one another and can easily trot to a meeting. Hong Kong is even more vertical and even friendlier to pedestrians, who can walk in air-conditioned skywalks from skyscraper to skyscraper. It takes only a few minutes to get around Wall Street or Midtown Manhattan. Even vast Tokyo can be traversed largely on foot. These great cities function because their height enables a huge number of people to work, and sometimes live, on a tiny sliver of land. But Mumbai is short, so everyone sits in traffic and pays dearly for space.
A city of 20 million people occupying a tiny landmass could be housed in corridors of skyscrapers. An abundance of close and connected vertical real estate would decrease the pressure on roads, ease the connections that are the lifeblood of a 21st-century city, and reduce Mumbai’s extraordinarily high cost of space. Yet instead of encouraging compact development, Mumbai is pushing people out. Only six buildings in Mumbai rise above 490 feet, and three of them were built last year, with more on the way as some of the height restrictions have been slightly eased, especially outside the traditional downtown. But the continuing power of these requirements explains why many of the new skyscrapers are surrounded by substantial green space. This traps tall buildings in splendid isolation, so that cars, rather than feet, are still needed to get around. If Mumbai wants to promote affordability and ease congestion, it should make developers use their land area to the fullest, requiring any new downtown building to have at least 40 stories. By requiring developers to create more, not less, floor space, the government would encourage more housing, less sprawl, and lower prices.
Historically, Mumbai’s residents couldn’t afford such height, but many can today, and they would live in taller buildings if those buildings were abundant and affordable. Concrete canyons, such as those along New York’s Fifth Avenue, aren’t an urban problem—they are a perfectly reasonable way to fit a large number of people and businesses on a small amount of land. Only bad policy prevents a long row of 50-story buildings from lining Mumbai’s seafront, much as high-rises adorn Chicago’s lakefront.
The magic of cities comes from their people, but those people must be well served by the bricks and mortar that surround them. Cities need roads and buildings that enable people to live well and to connect easily with one another. Tall towers, like Henry Ford II’s Renaissance Center in Detroit, make little sense in places with abundant space and slack demand. But in the most desirable cities, whether they’re on the Hudson River or the Arabian Sea, height is the best way to keep prices affordable and living standards high. |
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rffrydr
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dash
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| Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2011 2:40 pm Post subject: |
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The next important market to top?
From this week's Economist
| Quote: | Cranes dot the Chinese skyline, where more than 40% of the skyscrapers to be built over the next six years will be sited.
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http://www.economist.com/node/18281764 |
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HenryTo
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| Posted: Fri Jan 07, 2011 9:06 pm Post subject: |
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China joining the club--the fact that they're brave/arrogant enough to test the theory is a big red flag:
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Fri Jan 7, 10:55 am ET
China plans $1.3 billion knockoff of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa tower
With a generous infusion of Saudi Arabian cash, officials in Beijing are planning a $1.3 billion hotel inspired by the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, pictured. They hope the "seven-star" hotel will become a Beijing landmark, according to the Beijing Morning Post (via China Daily).
An unnamed Chinese official told AFP that the Saudis are to fund the entire hotel (whose seven stars are self-appointed, as no formal agency doles out more than five stars to hotels). It's unknown whether the building will try to top the half-mile-tall (2,717 feet) Burj Khalifa.
Chinese leaders are no doubt hoping that their project involves no replay of the final stages of the Dubai project last January.
A few weeks after the several-times-delayed monster building finally opened to great fanfare, it closed abruptly: An elevator malfunction stranded tourists en route to the observation deck, the only part of the building open at the time. It didn't reopen until April. And by the autumn, a mere 8 percent of the Burj Khalifa's apartments were occupied. Rents had fallen by almost half.
Meanwhile, the tiny Middle Eastern nation plunged into a debt crisis.
There are some faint suggestions that the commercial real estate market in China could likewise be headed for a fall. A surge in skyscraper construction has some financial analysts warning that China is misallocating capital on showy projects and that the bubble will soon burst.
One Hong Kong-based analyst says there may be a correlation between the quest to build the world's next tallest building and economic crises. "Is China building its way to a bubble?" analyst Andrew Lawrence wrote in a recent report, quoted by CNN. "It may have started with the Tower of Babel, but over the past 140 years, there appears to be an unhealthy correlation between building the world's next tallest building and an impending financial crisis: New York 1930, Chicago 1974, Kuala Lumpur 1997 and Dubai 2010. The world's tallest structures rarely stand alone, with skyscraper building booms coinciding with economic corrections." |
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2010 11:18 pm Post subject: |
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We might have to tweak this definition a little: is it a skyscraper or is it a city? No doubt it's a monument. MGM
By Tim Melvin
RealMoney.com Contributor
7/5/2010 10:00 AM EDT
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One screen I have played around with over the years involves the battle between insiders and short sellers. I like to look for stocks where the insiders either own a lot of stock or are buying stock, and the shares are heavily shorted. Such a situation sets up a tug of war on a stock, and it has been my experience that something inevitably has to change -- and probably soon -- for better or worse. Either the insiders prove correct and we are set to see upside, or the shorts are right, and the insiders are once again early to the party and about to get crushed along with all the other longs.
One stock that loosely fits the description is casino operator MGM Grand (MGM - commentary - Trade Now). There has been some small insider buying in recent months, as well as some option-exercise trades, in which it appears the officers and directors in question kept the shares obtained through exercise. Almost 30% of the float is sold short right now, so the battle lines appear to be forming. In addition to the small insider buying, investor John Paulson was also a buyer of the stock in the first quarter. So far, the shorts are winning big in this one, with the stock off sharply since the beginning of May. Simply put, the gaming and lodging business is terrible. MGM's key Vegas market is showing aggressive price competition, and this is pressuring margins at the new massive City Center complex MGM opened last year. The scheduled opening of another 3,000-room hotel in the city later this year is not going to help the pricing situation. The company has almost $13 billion of debt, and annual interest payments total more than $700 million. Tangible book value on this stock is about $7.60 and I think the shorts will continue to win until we trade below that level. |
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rffrydr
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 7:39 am Post subject: |
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Late break: renamed "Burj Khalifa" in honor of...the money.
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rffrydr
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Sat Sep 26, 2009 2:38 pm Post subject: |
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http://www.citycenter.com/
Was in Vegas last week watching the final push on the "Jewel of Las Vegas" City Center. The new home of high finance? This project which almost broke MGM is set for graduated move-in december 1. The most anticipated event is the re-pricing of of condos at the end of this month. Consensus is 30%. This will set prices down the tower condo feeding chain.
Louis Vuitton's abstraction anchors the bottom. I remember what a stink the french made when McDonald's went in on the Champs. Now they embrace Las Vegas Blvd. Question is, when you can stay at the Bellagio across the hall for $200/night are you really gonna purchase something a shade modern for $2million (and all the ancillary costs)--without room service?! Much still depends on Asia.
Town was full--of eurpoeans. LOVE was sold out on Sun-Mon. That's the thing about the "economy"--sometimes all it takes is 11 months of rain (london) to get to the sunshine.
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2009 11:53 pm Post subject: |
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Another kind of impossible building complete with boom/bust, hucksterism made truth, made lie, made true again--an allegory made perfect with devils and angels.
http://www.nps.gov/deva/historyculture/scottys-castle.htm
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Tue Mar 24, 2009 9:41 am Post subject: |
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rffrydr
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HenryTo
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| Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 11:10 am Post subject: |
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These are not new supertall skyscrapers, but they are definitely even more extravagant:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123630159510147111.html
| Quote: | In a case of monumentally bad timing, this year three of the biggest names in pro sports -- the Yankees, New York Mets and Dallas Cowboys -- are opening three of the most expensive stadiums ever built, filled with premium-priced seats and luxury amenities. At a combined cost of more than $3.5 billion, the stadiums were conceived and financed in a vastly different environment, a time when corporations and municipalities were flush with cash. Now they're opening just as corporate America is going through a massive belt-tightening -- and trying to avoid the appearance of extravagance at all costs.
"Let's face it, if you're taking TARP funds, it's really hard to justify getting a [luxury] box," says Neal Sroka, a luxury real estate agent hired by the Yankees to help sell the team's premium seats, referring to the funds distributed to banks under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
With just weeks before their new $1.1 billion stadium opens, the Cowboys still have 2,000 premium seats and about 50 of their 300 luxury suites left to sell. The Yankees have hired Mr. Sroka to drum up buyers for the hundreds of premium seats still in their inventory. The Mets, who once had deals for all 49 of their luxury suites, say they've had to go back to the market after one customer, whom they declined to name, backed out. |
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HenryTo
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| Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2008 2:42 am Post subject: |
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Construction of the Russia Tower officially halted:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/11/21/russia.tower/index.html?iref=mpstoryview
| Quote: | | The credit crisis meant there was no possibility of paying for the Norman Foster-designed 600-meter (1,968-foot) Russia Tower and no demand from tenants to fill it, Shalva Chigirinsky, head of developer Russian Land, was quoted as saying. |
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