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.

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). At first sight, this ecology will by local and glocal networked infrastructure, to star the hypermobile business traveller, or obey any naïve geographical laws implying that the highly paid knowledge specialist, with far-off people and places do not relate while close their associated consumption choices in up ones do. Infrastructure networks become a means of securing spaces from surrounding cities hotels, apartments, restaurants, shops and whilst at the same time tying their inner gyms. Yet these specialists require support, workings intensively into global vectors of flow and the complex ecology of the skyscraper and interconnection. (Graham and Marvin, will also include bicycle couriers, photocopier 2001: 204, 208) maintenance specialists, cleaners, lift engi- The growing trend in understanding urban- neers, receptionists, security guards, software ization as a relational process requires a view and systems specialists; those who deliver 44 Skyscraper geography sandwiches, wash the windows, drive taxis, accounts have to be far more provisional, and so on. The social impact of this should be more acute in the nuances of specific loca- obvious: as Graham and Marvin (2001) tions, historical contexts, and diverse social explore in Splintering urbanism, contemporary goals and identities of the actors involved in skyscrapers are often designed as nodes in these flows. ‘premium’ infrastructure networks – ‘high Nonetheless, we can identify a ‘star speed communications, “smart” highways, system’ of architects with a recognizable global airline networks [that] selectively ‘signature’ skyscraper style that appears in connect together the most favoured users projects around the world. Again, this is and places, both within and between cities’ nothing new. Cohen (1995) has identified the (p. 15). From this perspective, these buildings inspiration to European intellectuals that have tiny footplates but huge aggregate the American city provided in the earliest impacts on the city or metropolitan form. decades of the twentieth century, in literature as much as architecture and the arts. Such an 2 Knowledge flows in the design, observation is encapsulated in one of the architecture and engineering of skyscrapers most famous of the trans-Atlantic voyagers, While processes of globalization have cap- Mies van der Rohe, who wanted to build tured the attention of many scholars, tall skyscrapers in Berlin, but through circum- building technology has been an important stances beyond his control would take his US export for much of the twentieth century designs to be built in Chicago and New York. (Cody, 2003). Companies such as New York’s More recently, and alongside the major US Milliken Brothers prefigured contemporary firms with an established a reputation for debates with their establishment of branch skyscraper design, a number of European- offices in cities as diverse as London, based architects such as Renzo Piano, Capetown, Mexico City, Honolulu and Santiago Calatrava, Richard Rogers, Norman Sydney to serve different regional markets in Foster and Rem Koolhaas have begun to the first decades of the twentieth century. snare high-profile skyscraper commissions. Nonetheless, it is clear that this has moved to Of course, these designers are deeply embed- a different level – globally operative clients ded within complex networks of property (such as Ernst and Young or Cisco Systems) development finance, consultants specialist tend to use trusted teams of architects (such in circumnavigating locally specific urban as KPF or HOK), engineering firms (such as planning regulations, engineering firms, serv- Arup), and interiors designers (such as ice and interior firms, and – increasingly – DEGW) who may be responsible for office public relations. But it is clear that many of projects for these firms in whatever cities these architects are engaged in a complex they choose to locate in around the world. transmission of ideas and aesthetics. This may have a regional dimension. Olds On the one hand, there is the stylistic (2001) has identified the growth of a ‘Pacific response made by western architects to the Rim’ expert knowledge market of trans- (perceived) cultural context in which they national flows in engineering, property and find themselves working. Within a lot of surveying firms (see also Rimmer, 1991). architectural discourse, the rather crude However, Olds argues that existing analysis ‘global-local’ construct recurs frequently as of such spaces ‘are fundamentally abstracted, practitioners and critics alike seek to interpret decontextualized, and dehumanized’ (p. 40). the uneasy interplay of standardized building Here, there is little attention given to the production systems, centuries of indigenous subjectivities and motivations of ‘the formu- design history and relatively distinct modes of lators, funnellers, and skimmers’ (p. 40) of living and working. This presents particular the flows. In particular, Olds argues that challenges in the developmental states of Donald McNeill 45 southeast Asia that have explicitly adopted codes exhibited in Norman Foster’s Hong skyscrapers and infrastructure projects as Kong and Shanghai Bank, and the competing symbols of national modernization. For Bank of China design by I.M. Pei, are often example, Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Towers interpreted by geomancers as influencing were designed by an international architect Hong Kong’s transition from British to (Cesar Pelli) with Islamic motifs incorporated Chinese rule. The designs can often be inter- into the façade and floor-plans, an attempt to preted in a way that contradicts the architect’s fuse standardized western production meth- best intentions: as Cheng (1997) suggests, ods with a locally sensitive design vocabulary, Pei’s failure to adopt circular motifs ‘that tradi- sending ‘intentionally mixed ethnic messages tionally symbolize harmony and prosperity’ ... while obfuscating the metaphors so that a gives us a result that ‘is indeed a classic mod- single one does not dominate’ (Steele, 1997: ernist failure’ (p. 111). The triangular shafts 381). While some critics have seen these used by Pei have been identified by local motifs as simplistic, Bunnell (1999; 2004a; geomancers as daggers that hack into sur- 2004b) argues that this is to miss the point, rounding skyscrapers, and which had a malign that the towers were explicitly used to influence on the British Government House advertise a distinctive Malaysian modernity during the handover of control to China through easily quotable iconic architecture (see also Abbas, 1997: 79–90). Similarly, tall that would feature in adverts, in-flight building design in earthquake-prone areas is a magazines, postcards and even Hollywood key factor in countries such as Japan and feature films (see below). Taiwan, and many of the aforementioned However, there has been a stylistic ‘critical regionalist’ responses offered in counter-reaction from western-educated southeast Asia are centred around climatic Asian architects such as Ken Yeang concerns. In Yeang’s case, the ‘bioclimatic (Malaysia), William Lim and Tay Kheng Soon skyscraper’ gives us a range of new forms (Singapore), and Sumet Jumsai (Thailand) driven by the need to capture winds and who have had to develop new design strate- provide shading; Tay’s stress on tropicality is gies as a means of countering the market hold driven by a clear-sighted avoidance of of the likes of major US architectural firms symbolic quotation and the need to adopt such as Pelli, Kohn Pedersen Fox, or Skidmore technological form to tropical climates, to Owings and Merrill (Kusno, 2002: 131). The harness western-developed technology to difficulty faced by these architects is in step- specific climatic conditions. (Kusno, 2000; ping beyond a nationalist imagining to a 2002; and the collection in Tzonis et al., 2001). pan-Asian concept that gives them a com- Given the complexity and contingencies of petitive economy of scale in the region’s these flows, it is ironic that many of the construction markets, confronting ‘the rela- metaphors, adjectives and tropes used to tive failure of the Modern Movement to even represent and talk about the skyscraper consider appropriate environmental solutions emphasize fixity, solidity, rootedness and per- to the problem of the high-rise in the tropics’ manence. They are often central to debates (Steele, 1997: 383). about the changing nature of particular cities, So, it should be clear from this discussion and their place in the urban landscape and that, while skyscraper technology is predo- the city biography are worthy of fuller minantly exported by western firms (Cody, exploration. 2003), the design process may be significantly influenced by context-specific factors, be III Cityscapes and city narratives they climatic, aesthetic or cultural. For In contrast to the idea that skyscrapers are example, an obeisance to feng shui guides indissociable from the capitalist system, the many Chinese skyscraper designs. The design ‘faceless’ corporation, or the abstract flows 46 Skyscraper geography of capital that undermine place, there is an Petronas Towers (until recently the world’s argument that tall buildings give cities identity tallest buildings) and many others has made through ‘skyline’, an identifiable array of icons this argument, as Crilley notes: that provide orientation for walkers and Fundamental to [Pelli’s] argument is a hierar- drivers, and narrative markers for urban histo- chical distinction between ‘true’ skyscrapers rians (both professional and casual). They and mere tall buildings. The latter are just have played an important role in the visual vertical objects that do not carry the civic history of the twentieth and twenty-first cen- responsibilities of true skyscrapers. True skyscrapers, he maintains, are charged with turies, witnessed in countless films, postcards representational responsibilities to act, by and adverts. They also provide a poignant virtue of their towering height, as markers of reminder of visibility in society, both of the place, sculptors of the city silhouette and as powerful, who buy, sell, design or promote conveyors of public image. They must not the buildings, and of the hidden labourers finish abruptly in the flat top of modernist glass boxes, but culminate in a celebratory who construct and maintain them. gesture. (Crilley, 1993: 145).

1 Skylines In this sense, the skyscraper has always Impossible to ever inhabit in its totality, played a role in the representational strategies existent in full dramatic form only from a of financial and political elites to endow relatively distant perspective, the skyline is their city or nation with a projected self- nonetheless the most frequently invoked consciousness. The contemporary race for image when considering the impact of the tallest building in the world is evidence skyscrapers on cities. Wayne Attoe’s (1981) of this. entertaining analysis of the social significance Of course, post-9/11, the vanished World of these urbane horizontals rests on the Trade Center has become representative of basic premise that ‘a book about skylines of New York, and its structural form has been cities would not have been written a hundred endowed with an entirely different public years ago, for skylines are largely a 20th understanding than during its life. Its hotly century concern’ (p. xi). The invention of the debated replacement – the Freedom Tower – skyscraper form has dwarfed the ecclesiasti- is being conceived as a tower that also acts as cal or regal dominance of many city skylines, commemoration, that takes on a monumental not least when capped with a neon corporate role alongside its more orthodox provision of logo. Attoe’s narrative draws rightful office and retail space. In this context, the attention to other forms of skyline markers World Trade Center calamity was reflective (churches, mountains, communication towers, of the foundational nature of city skylines, as for example) that challenge the skyscraper, M. Christine Boyer remarks: and it is often the perceived damage done The overwhelming trauma produced by the to existing – and seemingly untouchable – wound in the skyline and on the ground forces structures (St Paul’s Cathedral dome in an exploration of two sets of graphic images London, or the Eiffel Tower, for example) and their related stories – those of the skyline that limit or divert the zoning for new of Manhattan and those of the collapsed World Trade Center. One narrates the glory skyscraper office buildings. of skyscrapers, while the other recounts the However, a feature of the postmodern trauma of their demise ...These acts of architectural turn in skyscraper design constructing and deconstructing are intimate (Steele, 1997) was the mobilization of tall and compassionate: they tie the skyline to the buildings as civic markers. Cesar Pelli, archi- ground from which it materialized and to which it returned. They draw into a unity both tect of Canary Wharf Tower, (currently the creating and wounding, both the celebration UK’s tallest building), New York’s World of making and the injury of unmaking. Financial Center (adjacent to the WTC), (Boyer, 2002: 100–11) Donald McNeill 47

In this context, Boyer then reviews the range often blends into advertising campaigns. For of images that emerge from Ground Zero, be example, the World Trade Center towers had it the filmic moment of impact, the plumes of been a recurring image in many adverts, as smoke that marked the immediate aftermath, backdrops to Gap and Bacardi products the tangled chaos of the site’s clearance or the among others, their form present on bill- humanity and bravery of the rescue opera- boards, television commercials and magazine tions. The subsequent struggle over how to adverts alike (Darton, 1999: 185–87). memorialize and respect those who died, the However, the visuality of skyscrapers is need to address its ‘ghosts’, is one that has not limited to appreciating them from exercised the minds of some of the world’s distance. As Sanders argues, New York has most prominent architects, and many of a plasticity or dimensionality that makes New York’s citizens (Goldberger, 2003). it highly visual: [New York] is a city of powerful imagery, of 2 The cinematic city powerful verticals and rushing horizontals, of In Höweler’s (2003) categorization of the bright walls and dark shadows and subtle latest generation of skyscrapers, he identifies tonalities in between; in the most elemental ‘mediatic’ examples which are ‘choreo- sense, it makes a good picture. (Sanders, 2001: 21) graphed, not designed ... a shift from the purely quantitative (i.e. how tall) to the design As Sanders proceeds (2001: 120–40), his sur- of urban effect (i.e. how spectacular)’ (pp. vey reminds us of the significance of tall 160–61). Here, the façades of buildings such buildings in a number of feature films, at times as the KPN Telecom tower in Rotterdam, taking central roles in the plot, such as in The The Centre in Hong Kong or 5 Times Square Hudsucker Proxy, or, more obviously, The in New York are designed to allow light Fountainhead. By extension, Mike Davis shows, and high-resolution animation, in includes ‘sentient buildings’in his ‘new lexicon effect becoming projection screens for a new of social control’ set out in The Ecology of form of urban sensation, that ‘manifest a Fear, where ‘that anachronism of the nine- presence in excess of their physical dimen- teenth century: the skyscraper’ is central to sions – a kind of hyper-presence’(p. 160). The the carceral nature of downtown (Davis, impact of these designs can be dramatic, but 1993: 368): ‘The sensory systems of many of can also be seen as a simple extension of the Los Angeles’s new office towers already ways in which major buildings have always include panopticon vision, smell, sensitivity to dominated their surroundings through projec- temperature and humidity, motion detection, tion, traced back to the bell-ringing of and, in a few cases, hearing’ (p. 368). So, the medieval cathedrals (Höweler, 2003: 160). sentient skyscraper of Die Hard ‘anticipates a Given its dramatic proportions and striking new generation of architectural antiheroes as visual impact, the skyscraper has become a intelligent buildings alternately battle evil or central actor in films and settings as diverse become its pawns’ (p. 368). as: King Kong (1933); the Emerald City on the While such cinematic confections can feed skyline in The Wizard of Oz, (1939) with its into imaginative geographies, the iconic trope of travelling from country to city down building may itself be a material element in the yellow brick road; Batman (Gotham); power-laden discourse. In Bunnell’s (2004b) disaster (The Towering Inferno, Die Hard); analysis of the use of the Petronas Towers in futurism (Fritz Lang’s Metropolis; see also Fox’s film Entrapment (starring Sean Connery Finkelstein, 2002, on skyscrapers in early and Catherine Zeta-Jones), the megastruc- science fiction cartoons); or in more recent ture in turn allows ‘megaprojection’. Here, high-located dramas as Working Girl, or the repositioning of Kuala Lumpur in a global The Hudsucker Proxy (Sanders, 2001). This economy – facilitated in the creation of 48 Skyscraper geography a new city centre and high-technology are fused: the idea that the major skyscraper is corridor of new towns – was, as noted above, somehow representative both of the historical part of prime minister Mahathir’s attempt narrative of the city and of the life stories of to represent Malaysian modernity. Yet the property developers, politicians or architects. film undermined the attempt, effectively This analysis is often associated with the ‘orientalizing’ Kuala Lumpur by cutting in phallic and/or egotistic associations of the scenes and frames of underdevelopment form, as with Donald Trump, for example: filmed 150 kilometres away in Malacca, I like thinking big. I always have. To me it’s very splicing them with the hypermodern simple: if you’re going to be thinking anyway, backdrop of the Petronas Towers: you might as well think big. Most people think small, because most people are afraid of Kuala Lumpur here remained imaginatively success, afraid of making decisions, afraid of entrapped within a ‘third world’ that had winning. And that gives people like me a great motivated Mahathirist postcolonial redeve- advantage. (Trump, 1988: 33) lopment. ‘Slums’, ‘pollution’, ‘poverty’ – all those signs of underdevelopment that a decade While the male ego’s desire for the tall build- of urban investment had sought to erase or, at ing makes good journalistic copy, academic least, render out of sight, had been collapsed into a single cinematic frame alongside Kuala work has usually been more thoughtful about Lumpur’s world class architectural centrepiece. theorizing the individual role in the building (Bunnell, 2004b: 300) process. Meaghan Morris’s (1992) considered take on Sydney’s high-rise CBD landscape, Such cinematic licence provoked a diverse and the analysis of the role of Australian range of responses among the Malaysian property tycoon Alan Bond in mirroring a public and political class. Yet more broadly, Trump-like self-obsession, is an important too, the film was merely replicating a ‘slums contribution. Similarly, Domosh (1989) uses and citadels’ trope that has prevailed in urban the case study of the construction of New discourse for centuries. York’s World Building in late nineteenth- century Manhattan to problematize academic 3 Biography and autobiography theorizations of major buildings. She narrates Within the compass of their spectacular the desire of Joseph Pulitzer to possess a thrusts, our skyscrapers hold an accumulation, building that promoted his newspaper (The story by story, of the city’s strivings, conflicts World) that at the time was in close competi- and contests for survival and domination. In tion with two other papers (the Tribune and their design and materials, their scale and proportions, their financing, their intended the Times) that had each constructed the purposes and ongoing consequences – in the (then) tallest buildings in the city. However, sorts of human interactions that do and do Domosh illustrates the need to locate this not take place within, among, and around within a political economy of skyscraper them – Manhattan’s commercial spires offer construction, arguing that factors such as themselves up as a living language of the city’s struggles, writ large. (Darton, 1999: 6) land value, and technological innovations such as elevator development, played significant The idea of the skyscraper as being central roles in the process. Of course, this raises to the narration of the urban history of cities, a perennial question in cultural analysis. the idea that they possess biographies, is While Domosh’s account (elaborated in evident in a range of publications that tell her 1996 book) is thorough, she faces the the history of single buildings; Tauranac’s problem of bridging empirical and theoretical The Empire State Building (1995), Darton’s gaps: Divided we Stand (1999) and Gillespie’s Twin In other words, to understand the World To w e r s (2002) are only three examples. In this Building necessarily involves one in several mode of urban writing, two biographical forms layers and types of explanation – both Donald McNeill 49

functional (land values) and symbolic (need for would become the longest, rather than the legitimacy), of immediate relation to the object tallest, in the world). Here, therefore, the sky- (Pulitzer’s concerns) and very distant from the scraper is discursively mobilized in practices of object (development of a class-based society). And these different layers and types of talking. Allen’s The city in slang captures the explanation are certainly interrelated, although etymology of the term’s birth in New York, how those relationships work may not be so where cloud-supporter, cloudscraper and readily apparent. (Domosh, 1989: 350–51) skysweeper were eventually superseded in The theoretical weighting given to each ‘layer popular usage. Similarly, new social types of explanation’ varies depending on the became associated with the form, such as the perspective of the writer, and it is worth ‘sidewalk superintendent’, the ‘humorous reflecting on how the theoretical baggage of name for a pedestrian observer at the edge of the geographer (e.g., Harvey, 1994, on a construction site’ (Allen, 1993: 127–35). Canary Wharf) may contrast with that of Finally, there is a hidden, but very vital, the architectural critic or historian. social geography to most skyscrapers. On the one hand, there are the previous cityscapes 4 The skyscraper and everyday life wiped away by the tall building, as celebrated by Norman Klein (1997), whose fascination One dominant mode of representing the Expressionist city was to focus upon the inner with urban erasure moves him to construct life of the human subject in the city streetscape walking tours of vanished landscapes (see bombarded with all dynamic effects upon also, for example, Darton, 1999, on the previ- the individual. Here, the street at a distance, ous incarnations of the site of the World the street viewed from above familiar to Trade Center). Then there is the economy many Impressionist representations of the metropolis, was replaced by an increasingly and organizational culture of the labour fragile human subject buffeted by the throng processes of the construction industry, class of the chaotic urban crowd, its traffic and struggles around on-site safety and worker its threatening built structures, an urban nexus protection, and the migrant labour responsi- imploding upon the individual. (Frisby, 2001: ble for the site clearance and building of these 21) structures. And then there are the genuine The Expressionist aesthetic that emerged in outcasts, the ‘smokers’ huddling or solitary at central European cities in the interwar period the doorways of smoke-free offices, captured provides a powerful counter-perspective to in Louise Dignand’s photography (in Barley viewpoints that stress the order, rationality and Ireson, 2001: 84–85), all the while and discourse of progress that often sur- engaging in an interesting and complex form rounded the development of the modern of sociality. skyscrapers. In cities such as Paris, the Corbusierian ideal of a city of towers set back IV Skyscrapers and city levels next to expressways (killing the street) has a So far, I have briefly explored the ways in long history of opposition. By contrast, there which skyscrapers inhabit disembodied is a rich – if poorly documented – history of relational geographies, and frequently appear popular interpretation of the city, where the in representations of cities. In this final bombast, power and prestige of the building section, I address the skyscraper as experien- are ridiculed, romanticized, misrepresented or tial, embodied landscapes which figure in the undermined. As Bunnell (1999) shows, the city’s ‘simultaneity of trajectories’ (Amin and Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur were Thrift, 2002: 22), of individual lives brought the subject of considerable local rumour or into intense copresence. In other words, it is comedy (that Prime Minister Mahathir had time to stop worrying about the façades and taken the penthouse suite, that one tower the silhouettes, cross the lobby and step into was leaning, and that if the buildings fell they the elevator. 50 Skyscraper geography

1 Three-dimensionality rapid vertical transport offered by the express If we take for instance, a city’s Central elevator. Business District (CBD), with an area of 20 hectares and a height limit of 30 storeys 2 Rapid verticality (or 120 metres assuming a typical floor height of four metres), the planning study area is in The elevator is a special prop for the effect the entire three-dimensional spatial imagination ... As the axis mundi that moves matrix over the 20 hectares land area up to a between concentric rings of gravitational pull, height of 120 metres. The expanded urban or between orders of organization or power, planning area becomes a three-dimensional the elevator has a role in the scenarios of zone above the land area. Planning is no longer philosophy and futurology ... In fiction and on the horizontal plane, with extruded high- cinema, the elevator is the site of wordless rises linked essentially at the lower levels or at embarrassment or cool and final goodbyes, the ground plane, but the entire spatial zone not prolonged hanky-waving farewells. It is a that extends vertically above the site. This black box that erases notions of scale, external zone has a network of potentially linkable points of reference, and sometimes, in ‘places-in-the-sky’ that will have their own our imagination, memory, time, or distance. complex set of planning and urban design rules. (Easterling, 2003: 125) (Yeang, 2002: 79) It is the elevator, rather than structural The importance of skyscrapers to the volu- technology per se, that has humbly driven metric dimensions of urban space is, of the skyscraper since its inception. And – course, one of their major contributions. As as Easterling’s (2003) essay on its history the Malaysian architect Ken Yeang argues in argues – it is innovation in elevator technology Reinventing the Skycraper (2002), there is also that will drive future skyscraper form. Prior a sense in which the rationality of skyscraper to the attack on the World Trade Center, the planning is tyrannical. Yeang’s speculative Otis Elevator Company’s Odyssey system – remarks quoted above are untrammelled by which allows elevator cars to ‘overtake’ the commercial demands of the property in a ‘three-car shuffle’ as the company puts development market, but his argument about it – had the potential to vastly extend the how tall buildings should be seen as three- potential height of skyscrapers, and was dimensional, habitable, potentially diverse being marketed to a number of new tower spaces provide a refreshing diversion of developments. a debate polarized between impact on the The issue of rapid movement between skyline and engagement with the street. levels has been at the heart of skyscraper Why not have an Oxfam shop on level 16, as form in the twentieth century. The elegant Yeang playfully suggests? cinematic and social history of elevators, In a similar way, the imaginative City levels escalators and moving pavements contained (Barley and Ireson, 2001) playfully but in Goetz (2003) is a sign of a growing interest piercingly identifies various issues surrounding in both the plasticity of cities and the complex the plasticity of urban form, including ‘ele- communities of users that inhabit the appa- vated territories’ (those spaces high above rently lifeless tall building. The futuristic ground from penthouses to office floors to glamour associated with the express glass lifts flats to tourist viewing platforms), the nature (favoured by Roald Dahl’s Willie Wonka, and of the street as a level, and the dynamic pioneered by John Portman’s 1967 Hyatt worlds of the subterranean city. Here, the Regency in Atlanta; see Patton, 2003), or the challenge is ‘to give voice to a rich, fluid elevator imaginaries discussed in Garfinkel and multi-layered urban reality that cannot (2003) and Hall (2003), demonstrate the be described by a conventional map’ powerful hold that these technologies have (Ireson, 2001: 7), a city sliced into layers, had on city users. Of course, as on ground accessed by the mundane stairwell and the level, the issue of access and positioning of Donald McNeill 51 the public at various points in the skyscraper is urbanism identifies the problems faced by often controversial. Public access to rooftop the contemporary skyscraper as a ‘terminal’: bars, restaurants, viewing platforms or gar- It is paradoxical ... that an industry which dens is now seen as being an important issue endlessly proclaims the ‘death of distance’ in skyscraper planning permission (although actually remains driven by the old-fashioned security concerns are often used to thwart geographical imperative of putting physical this). networks in trenches and conduits in the ground ... The greatest challenge of the multiplying telecommunications firms in global 3 Roots cities is what is termed the problem of the ‘last mile’: getting satellite installations, optic Imagine grabbing Manhattan by the Empire fibre ‘drops’ and whole networks through State Building and pulling the entire island up the expensive ‘local loop’. In other words, the by its roots. Imagine shaking it. Imagine millions challenge is to thread fibre under the congested of wires and hundreds and thousands of cables roads and pavements of the urban fabric, to the freeing themselves from the great hunks of ‘smart’ buildings, dealer floors, headquarters, rock and tons of musty and polluted dirt. Imagine media complexes and stock exchanges that are a sewer system and a set of water lines the most lucrative target users. (Graham and three times as long as the Hudson River. Picture Marvin, 2001: 316) mysterious little vaults just beneath the crust of the sidewalk, a sweaty grid of steam pipes 103 While ways are being sought to free IT-rich miles long ... rusty old gas lines that could be buildings from the earth, the streets and wrapped twenty-three times around Manhattan ... (Sullivan, 1947, in Graham, 2000: 273) pavements surrounding many of the world’s leading banks and finance houses will remain Graham’s welcome unearthing of this won- beneath ‘at work’ signs for years to come. derful metaphor brings forth the kind of imaginative leap required to grasp the com- 4 Seeing from high territories plexity, and banality, of the hidden roots of While in a previous section I discussed the the skyscraper. After all, the skyscraper has a role of the skyline in the modern urban expe- complex orientation with the street and rience, the politics of the view, of being underground. This is often expressed in new located within high territories, is often impli- planning regulations, anti-terrorist planning, cated in social geographies. For Griffin congestion charging and road pricing. The (2003), musing on the high-rise residential nature of underground levels in space-starved landscape of Australia’s eastern seaboard, major cities that still trade off the benefits of ‘living the view’ is an urban experience that centrality will come to dominate urban poli- has altered over the years in accordance with tics in years to come. Access to densely filled changing social tastes. For example, the tower blocks will increasingly only be possible desire to achieve ‘a wide-screen view of with a system of integrated underground the Pacific’ has, he speculates, been part of public transport, and already sites for tall a more recent revaluation of (tamed) nature, buildings are being assembled around major contrasting with previous attitudes to the transport interchanges (as at La Défense sea as being malign and/or uninteresting. in Paris). For example, in the City of London, Even more vividly, Wharton’s (2001) history planning permissions for tall blocks are often of the Hilton hotel chain stresses the only being granted with the barest provision ability to gaze down on foreign territories for car parking, putting additional pressure (such as Cairo), a western foothold in the on existing underground links. Similarly, the ‘east’ and communist Europe during the question of access to information and cold war: communications technology depends on The Hilton was a machine for viewing. In the control of sub-street space. For example, foreground that it framed was the body of Graham and Marvin’s (2001) Splintering the guest; in the background was the immediate 52 Skyscraper geography

source of the patron’s status, the foreign (exploiting natural wind-cooling systems, for panorama. The extended vista opened through example) has added extra justification to the the plate glass windows, offering visual control desire of property developers to build high. of an alien urban landscape from an entirely secure site of observation. (p. 5) So where might work on the skyscraper go from here? I suggest four strands of a research Also, while high-level territory such as pent- agenda. First, much needs to be done to houses and luxury hotels is often associated clarify the city-urban nexus within a relational with elite power, humbler forms of social and representational geography. Crudely, sky- housing often stressed a democracy of views, scrapers are often caught within a Manichean which was often used as a justification in debate (‘Olympian or Orwellian, depending the development of the high-rise public on how you look at it’, Huxtable, 1984: 11) housing form. which either demonizes their impact on public life or, by contrast, celebrates them V Conclusions as totems of financial vibrancy. The materiality of the skyscraper – its height, Secondly, despite Knox’s (1987) attempt to form, massing, footplate, infrastructure and stimulate such debate, and some high-profile neighbourhood – endows it with a special interventions on the significance of architec- place within urban territories. Socially, it tural production within ‘late capitalism’ (see opens up numerous questions about the Harvey, 1994, on Canary Wharf), there has nature of transnational knowledge flows, and been only sporadic attention from geogra- how barely visible material transactions are phers to how the contemporary landscape is housed. Collectively perceived as a skyline, it being actually grounded in architectural prac- is able to horizontally define cities in a con- tice, construction technology, and property venient representational frame, exploited by development and finance (but see how the film-makers, politicians and architects alike. economies of organizing office spaces have Its sheer verticality raises questions about been analysed by O’Neill and McGuirk,2003, urban futures, and the art and work of and how zoning regulations and building living high, but also demands an attention cycles have shaped skyscraper vernaculars to roots and the invisible cities of service in New York and Chicago, Willis, 1995). areas and underground transport. Nonetheless, Kris Olds (2001) has provided a Ironically, the attack on the World Trade valuable theorization of where this could be Center has given the skyscraper a new social taken, and it would be interesting to develop symbolism of defiance. There has been no some of these ideas to consider, to take just a slackening of the drive towards building few examples, the training and professional high (apart from the normal market cycles). ties of architects and structural engineers The building professions have responded with such as Skidmore Owings Merrill’s Fazlur enhanced safety and evacuation specifica- Khan (Ali, 2001); the means by which archi- tions. Skyscrapers remain central to urban tectural styles travel and are mediated, life, and may – as population densities through monographs and design competi- increase and sustainability arguments are tions, for example, before being absorbed by voiced more frequently – become even more clients; and the ways in which ‘signature’ pervasive (particularly in residential construc- architects are able to organize their creative tion). Certainly, evidence from cities as teams, and operate within the specific local diverse as London, Barcelona and Singapore urban contexts of cities that may be miles suggests that centrality of location is undimi- from their base office and birthplace. nished given the financial return to developers Thirdly, work on the materiality of every- of high building, and the increasing accept- day life could be profitably developed in ance of arguments for the ‘green skyscraper’ relation to the tall building. This could range Donald McNeill 53 from ethnographies of living in elevated I write these words at the start of July 2004, territories (Barley and Ireson, 2001) to con- the same database gives corresponding fig- sidering the social and cultural geographies of ures of a world total of 87,881, with 5534 the view (Griffin, 2003). There are intriguing under construction and 1449 demolished. questions over the nature of skyscrapers and That these numbers – like the buildings that the visual (including the increasingly creative they signify – will continue to rise and fall use of façade and interior lighting), which suggests the immediacy and dynamism of may perhaps be connected to debates over the skyscraper as a spatial phenomenon. the privileging of visuality in the imagining of cities. There is growing evidence to suggest Acknowledgements that tall buildings might be considered as code- A version of this paper was presented in space (to borrow from Dodge and Kitchin’s the seminar series of the Department of (2004) analysis of the modern air travel Geography, National University of Singapore system), given the complex security, climate in April 2003, which yielded numerous and and information systems used in regulating very useful ideas about geographical position these structures (see Philip Kerr’s (1996) novel and the skyscraper. Many thanks to Lisa Law, Gridiron for an entertaining satire on this). Tim Bunnell and James Sidaway for arranging Fourthly, political geographers might be this, and to participants for suggesting further moved to consider the significance of tall avenues of research. Kim McNamara made building sites as a nexus of power made some very insightful remarks on the draft visible, as the aftermath of the World Trade paper. I am also grateful to Ron Johnston and Center attack revealed: the anonymous referees for their helpful Recovering this site for the living city is, comments. therefore, inescapably political. Political, to be sure, because New York now takes its place in the long line of cities that have been damaged References or nearly destroyed by terrorist and military Abbas, A. 1997: Hong Kong: culture and the politics of attacks stretching, through the recent past, disappearance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota from Hiroshima and Berlin to Sarajevo and Press. Kabul. Political because of Wall Street’s role as Ali, M.M. 2001: Art of the skyscraper: the genius of an epicentre of world capitalism. Political Fazlur Khan. New York: Rizzoli. because of Manhattan’s site at the nexus of Allen, I.L. 1993: The city in slang: New York life and finance and real estate development – the city’s popular speech. New York: Oxford University Press. most important industry. Political because of Amin, A. and Thrift, N. 2002: Cities: reimagining the the power-brokering that will determine urban. Oxford: Polity. Downtown’s future development. Political Attoe, W. 1981: Skylines: understanding and molding because of the growing clash between urban silhouettes. Chichester: Wiley. hallowed ground and buildable space. (Sorkin Barley, N. and Ireson, A., editors 2001: City Levels. and Zukin, 2002b: xi) Berlin: Birkhäuser. Boyer, M.C. 2002: Meditations on a wounded skyline and To conclude, I have suggested in this paper its stratigraphies of pain. In Sorkin, M. and Zukin, S., that by drawing on various subdisciplines of editors, After the World Trade Center: rethinking New geography, the skyscraper can explored in a York City, New York: Routledge, 109–20. Bunnell, T. 1999: Views from above and below: the holistic manner. While it is easy to fetishize Petronas Twin Towers and/in contesting visions of the significance of the tall building, I end with development in contemporary Malaysia. Singapore one thought: as I started the final revisions of Journal of Tropical Geography 20, 1–23. this paper, I listed in the second paragraph the — 2004a: Malaysia, modernity and the multimedia super number of buildings in the world over 35 corridor: a critical geography of intelligent landscapes. London: Routledge. metres in height as 85,350, with 5158 under — 2004b: Re-viewing the Entrapment controversy: construction and 1402 demolished, according megaprojection, (mis)representation and postcolonial to www.emporis.com. A few weeks later, as performance. GeoJournal 59, 297–305. 54 Skyscraper geography

Cheng, M.B.C. 1997: Resurgent Chinese power in Graham, S. and Marvin, S. 2001: Splintering urbanism: postmodern disguise: the new Bank of China networked infrastructures, technological mobilities and buildings in Hong Kong and Macau. In Evans, G. and the urban condition. London: Routledge. Tam, M., editors, Hong Kong: the anthropology of a Griffin, G. 2003: Beyond the beach and into the blue. Chinese metropolis. Richmond, UK: Curzon, 102–23. Cultural Studies Review 9, 124–38. Cody, J.W. 2003: Exporting American architecture, Hall, P.A. 2003: Designing non-space: the evolution of 1870–2000. London: Routledge. the elevator interior. In Goetz, A., editor, Up down Cohen, J.-L. 1995: Scenes of the world to come: across: elevators, escalators, and moving sidewalks, European architecture and the American challenge, London: Merrell. 59–77. 1893–1960. Paris: Flammarion. Harvey, D. 1994: The invisible political economy of Crilley, D. 1993: Megastructures and urban change: architectural production. In Bouman, O. and van aesthetics, ideology and design. In Knox, P.L., editor, Toorn, R., editors, The invisible in architecture, The restless urban landscape, Englewood Cliffs, London: Academy, 420–27. NJ: Prentice Hall, 127–64. Höweler, E. 2003: Skyscraper: designs of the recent past Darton, E. 1999: Divided we stand: a biography of New and of the near future. London: Thames and Hudson. York’s World Trade Center. New York: Basic Books. Huxtable, A.L. 1984: The tall building artistically Davis, M. 1993: Ecology of fear: Los Angeles and the reconsidered: the search for a skyscraper style. imagination of disaster. New York: Metropolitan New York: Pantheon. Books. Ireson, A. 2001: Introduction. In Barley, N. and Ireson, — 2001: The flames of New York. New Left Review 12, A., editors, City levels, Basel and London: Birkhäuser 34–50. August, 6–10. Dodge, M. and Kitchin, R. 2004: Flying through Kerr, P. 1996: Gridiron. London: Vintage. code/space: the real virtuality of air travel. Klein, N. 1997: The history of forgetting: Los Angeles Environment and Planning A 36, 195–211. and the erasure of memory. London: Verso. Domosh, M. 1989: A method for interpreting Knox, P.L. 1987: The social production of the built landscape: a case study of the New York World environment: architects, architecture and the Building. Area 21, 347–55. post-modern city. Progress in Human Geography 11, — 1996: Invented cities: the creation of landscape in 354–77. nineteenth-century New York and Boston. New Haven, Kusno, A. 2000: Behind the postcolonial: architecture, CT: Yale University Press. urban space and political cultures in Indonesia. Easterling, K. 2003: Conveyance ‘germs’: elevators, London: Routledge. automated vehicles, and the shape of global cities. — 2002: Architecture after nationalism: political imagi- In Goetz, A., editor, Up down across: elevators, nings of Southeast Asian architects. In Bunnell, T., escalators, and moving sidewalks, London: Merrell, Drummond, L. and Ho, K.C., editors, Critical reflec- 124–39. tions on cities in southeast Asia, Tokyo: Brill, 124–49. Finkelstein, H. 2002: Skyscraper vision in early McNeill, D. 2002: The mayor and the world city sky- science-fiction art. In Koehler, K., editor, The built line: London’s tall buildings debate. International surface: architecture and the pictorial arts from Planning Studies 7, 325–34. Romanticism to the twenty-first century, Aldershot: Morris, M. 1992: Great moments in social climbing: King Ashgate, 228–56. Kong and the human fly. Sydney: Local Consumption Frisby, D. 2001: Cityscapes of modernity: critical Publications. explorations. Oxford: Polity. O’Neill, P. and McGuirk, P. 2003: Reconfiguring the Garfinkel, S. 2003: Elevator stories: vertical imagina- CBD: work and discourses of design in Sydney’s tion and the spaces of possibility. In Goetz, A., office space. Urban Studies 40, 1751–67. editor, Up down across: elevators, escalators, and Olds, K. 2001: Globalization and urban change: capital, moving sidewalks, London: Merrell, 173–95. culture and Pacific Rim mega-projects. Oxford: Oxford Gillespie, A.K. 2002: Twin towers: the life of New York University Press. City’s World Trade Center (revised edition). New York: Patton, P. 2003: Hovering vision. In Goetz, A., editor, New American Library. Up down across: elevators, escalators, and moving Goetz, A., editor 2003: Up down across: elevators, sidewalks, London: Merrell, 105–23. escalators, and moving sidewalks. London: Merrell. Rimmer, P.J. 1991: The global intelligence corps and Goldberger, P. 2003: Eyes on the prize. New Yorker world cities: engineering consultancies on the move. 10 March. Retrieved 15 November 2003 from In Daniels, P.W., editor, Services and metropolitan www.newyorker.com/printable/?critics/030310crsk_ development: international perspectives, London: skyline Routledge. 66–106. Graham, S. 2000: Underground. In Pile, S. and Thrift, Sanders, J. 2001: Celluloid skyline: New York and the N., editors, City A–Z, London: Routledge, 271–73. movies. London: Bloomsbury. Donald McNeill 55

Sorkin, M. and Zukin, S., editors 2002a: After the Tzonis, A., Lefaivre, L. and Stagno, B., editors World Trade Center: rethinking New York City. New 2001: Tropical architecture: critical regionalism in the York: Routledge. age of globalization. Chichester: Wiley-Academy. — 2002b: Introduction. In Sorkin, M. and Zukin, S., Wharton, A.J. 2001: Building the cold war: Hilton hotels editors, After the World Trade Center: rethinking and modern architecture. Chicago: University of New York City, New York: Routledge, vii–xi. Chicago Press. Steele, J. 1997: Architecture today. London: Phaidon. Willis, C. 1995: Form follows ﬁnance: skyscrapers and Sullivan, R. 1947: Introduction. In Granick, H., skyline in New York and Chicago. New York: Underneath New York, New York: Fordham Press. Princeton Architectural Press. Tauranac, J. 1995: The Empire State Building: the Yeang, K. 2002: Reinventing the skyscraper: a making of a landmark. New York: St Martin’s Press. vertical theory of urban design. Chichester: Wiley- Trump, D. 1988: The art of the deal. New York: Warner. Academy.