The Skyscrapers of Frankfurt

[EddMarkStarr]

For a guy who didn't want to be on camera, Fred Mills has certainly made The B1M the site for engineers, and their admirers.

Now, the city of Frankfurt has joined the skyscraper club with a massive development squeezed into a small space.

Has anyone noticed that as the tall buildings go up, affordable housing disappears?

 

[gsdx]

How about them muss-culls, eh?

I'll have to check out more of his videos.

 

[pigface]

You're a hotdog but you'd better not try to hurt her, Frankfurter.

 

[NotHardUp1]

Has anyone noticed that as the tall buildings go up, affordable housing disappears?

Well, you actually live in a metropolis with high rises, so I defer to your observation, but my thought was that the reverse is true. Population density and the rising level of wealth in prosperous city results in skyrocketing land values and rents, which results in speculators being able to invest in high rises to capitalize on that premium acreage.

The video talked about how European countries eschew high rises, but that wasn't a very honest telling of the tale. Most of the European cities have low birth rates so much less pressure on housing than do cities with high birth rates. Further, many of the cities lack real investment, and survive on the tourist teat (which the host did allude to in the vid), so they aren't magnets for investment dollars the way Frankfurt is with its wealth.

For cities in boom, they have the choice of consuming all their green spaces with sprawl, or building up, or investing in major infrastructure to bring in commuters, which is the pattern of the previous century, not now.

 

[unloadonme]

Has anyone noticed that as the tall buildings go up, affordable housing disappears?

There are a lot of tall buildings going up in Birmingham city centre. Some of them are at least partly residential and affordable for anyone earning a reasonable salary. This hasn't reduced the amount of housing in the suburbs and, if anything, the principle of supply and demand means that suburban prices are being held back by increasing city centre supply.

 

[EddMarkStarr]

Seattle has quite a few tall apartment complexes under construction all over the city. Tall office building construction has stopped with many buildings still unoccupied. While I'm thankful to see new apartments I can only wonder about the rents to be charged. Seattle plays hard ball with investors who fund most of the new construction and part of those deals include rental prices.

The Escala in Seattle made news a few years ago with its "50 Shades of Grey" penthouse going for $4 million.