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Skyscraper Geography Donald Mcneill

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Skyscraper Geography Donald Mcneill Progress in Human Geography 29, 1 (2005) pp. 41–55 Skyscraper geography Donald McNeill Department of Geography, King’s College, London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, UK Abstract: This paper argues that geographers have tended to neglect the substantial impact of skyscrapers on urban life. Yet the significance of these buildings – in terms of height, levels of human occupancy, aesthetic impact and popular representation and use – is in need of careful geographical interpretation. Synthesizing work from a number of disciplines – geography, social history, architecture, planning, and cultural studies – it argues that the skyscraper is an extremely complex spatial phenomenon. First, the development and diffusion of skyscrapers as a global form is considered in terms of its geographical contingency, and the relational nature of its production. Secondly, the representational nature of the form in relation to cities is discussed, including attention to cinematic, biographical and everyday practices of representation. Thirdly, the volumetric nature of the skyscraper in urban form is briefly reviewed, focusing on its differing impacts on urban space and at various physical strata of the city. Taken together, there are important urban, political, social, cultural and economic debates that underpin this apparently regularized, rationalized built form. Key words: architecture, cinematic city, design, skylines, tall buildings, urban geography. I Introduction and urban planners all have good cause to consider as their own the presence of For the skyscraper is not only the building of the century, it is also the single work of these densely inanimate, yet vibrantly architecture that can be studied as the human, interventions in urban societies. Yet embodiment and expression of much that recent debates on the future of tall buildings, makes the century what it is ... For better or only given urgency by the attack on the for worse, it is measure, parameter, or World Trade Center, may benefit from apotheosis of our consumer and corporate culture. No other building type incorporates so insights drawn from various subdisciplines of many forces of the modern world, or has been human geography. These machines for so expressive of changing belief systems and so working in, these huge interruptions to responsive to changing tastes and practices. It place identity, these knots in a mesh of romanticizes power and the urban condition ... flows, these gargantuan footprints on the The tall building probes our collective psyche as it probes the sky. (Huxtable, 1984: 11) urban geography of the city are open to experiential, perspectival, sensual, locational Which discipline owns the skyscraper? Archi- and sociological phenomena that remain tectural theorists, social historians, engineers barely explored. © 2005 Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd 10.1191/0309132505ph527oa 42 Skyscraper geography In framing this discussion, I am not overly Trade Center site provided yet another twist: concerned with an enforced categorization. a skyscraper as monument and memorial. Some refer to the ‘tall building’ as opposed to The collapse of the WTC gave succour to a skyscraper. The fairly minimal definition those keen to herald the demise of the adopted by the most detailed compendium of skyscraper, who came from many political the skyscraper form – www.emporis.com – directions, from those who saw it as an details all buildings in the world over 35 abhorrent imposition upon the human scale of metres in height, giving a total of 85,350 cities, to those, such as Mike Davis, who see a at the time of writing (which includes 5158 geopolitics of capitalist fear at the heart of under construction, and 1402 demolished). urban decision-making in major cities: This website includes a table of the world’s 200 tallest skyscrapers (currently led by There is little doubt ... that bin Laden et al have put a silver stake in the heart of the ‘downtown Taipei), a skyline ‘impact’ index (led by Hong revival’ in New York and elsewhere. The Kong), and – most intriguingly perhaps – a traditional central city where buildings and table of skyscrapers by population size (led by land values soar towards the sky is not yet the Spanish resort of Benidorm). Perhaps dead, but the pulse is weakening. The current most significant, however, is that of the globalization of fear will accelerate the high- tech dispersal of centralized organizations, world’s 15 tallest buildings, only three are in including banks, securities firms, government the USA, and none are in Europe. In debates offices, and telecommunications centres, into over the future of urban form, existing regional multi-site networks ... In this spatial western-biased theories and models are of model ... satellite offices, telecommuting and, if questionable relevance. the need be, comfortable bunkers will replace most of the functions of that obsolete Furthermore, many of the arguments pre- behemoth, the skyscraper. (Davis, 2001: 44) sented below are concerned with the tall office building, and the sociology of work that Yet, while in the aftermath of the World attaches to that. However, many skyscrapers Trade Center attack doubt was cast on are, of course, apartment blocks, which can the future of the tall building in the city, it range from cramped, cheaply constructed soon became clear that, if anything, it stiff- forms of social housing to luxury condomi- ened the resolve of architects and developers niums. A substantial number of tall buildings to improve evacuation, fire and structural are occupied by hotels, where lofty aerial per- technologies. spectives become a commercial selling point. My argument in this paper is that geogra- Finally, there is a growing tendency among phy is well positioned to provide the holistic developers and policy-makers to favour interpretation of such materially substantial mixed-use developments, where office, hotel interventions in the urban context. The eclec- and residential uses are shared within one ticism of geography – with a corpus of theory building. on place identity (and the placelessness often Such insights give a flavour of the loca- associated with the skyscraper form), on the tional geography of the skyscraper, but, while relational geographies of financial and corpo- acknowledging the importance of aggregate real flow that provides a rationale for the statistics and rankings, it is clear that some existence of such structures, with an interest skyscrapers, some architects, and some sky- in urban form and city life, and with an under- lines are more discussed, represented and standing of the nature of everyday urban cognized than others. Here, the historical space and space usage – provides a series of emergence of tall buildings in certain key critical perspectives that might explain the cities – New York and Chicago, particularly – prevalence and significance of these struc- has established the form as a vernacular. tures. Yet, in Sorkin and Zukin’s (2002a) edited The debate over the rebuilding of the World collection, After the World Trade Center, only Donald McNeill 43 two of the contributors – Neil Smith and of specific, material spaces as being switching David Harvey – would be considered main- points or containers of people and techno- stream geographers, perhaps explicable by logies that are interconnected with other local factors in the case of this specific collec- similar spaces many miles distant. As with tion, but symptomatic of a wider issue. When airports and communication towers, sky- considering the materiality of the urban – how scrapers are obvious candidates for housing it is planned and designed, how it has evolved globalized flows, whether metaphorical or historically – a considerable amount of the material. Yet this ‘global’ history of the best work has been undertaken in other disci- skyscraper conceals a range of complex plines. In what follows, I make a call for relational geographies, from a conventional geographers to take a fuller interest in the sky- locational geography (the distribution of scraper, through three main bodies of work: tall buildings in the world’s cities), to a first, the literature on globalization, flow and mobile range of visual codes and corporeal mobility, which opens up a number of perspec- movements, to debates over the nature of tives on skyscrapers as an essential part of the transnationalism, global-local relations, and global economy and ecumene; secondly, the ideals of a ‘universal’ building style popular- relationship between the tall building and ized by the modernist movement. Within the ‘city’ as an identifiable place with its own economic geographies, the density of human identities, histories, myths and collective place occupation afforded by the skyscraper is narratives; thirdly, a discussion of the plasticity an important element of the modern eco- and multidimensionality of the urban experi- nomy. On the one hand, they are central ence. Much of the work reviewed in this points in the debate over ‘cities as sites’ of paper hails from outside geography, including both tacit and codified knowledge allowing social history, urban studies, film studies, soci- the kind of logistical access required to sustain ology and – of course – architectural history urban clusters, and often housing some of and criticism. However, it is my contention the ‘light institutions’ deemed significant to that a number of geography subdisciplines – the functioning of the contemporary eco- economic, cultural, political and of course nomy (Amin and Thrift, 2002: 53–77). This urban – could both enrich and be enriched by has been central to the relaxation of planning a greater sensitivity to this literature. controls on tall buildings in the City of London in recent years, for example II Relational geographies (McNeill, 2002). On the other hand: ‘once of skyscrapers we replace the idea of the city as a territorial economic engine with an understanding of 1 Skyscrapers, spatial stretching and cities as sites in spatially stretched economic urban ecologies relations, a rich ecology of urban life opens Relational links within and between cities are far up for consideration’ (Amin and Thrift, too multiple and complex, and far too mediated 2002: 63).
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