Last week we looked at trends in skyscraper construction speed for New York and Chicago, finding that New York has gotten significantly slower at building skyscrapers over time. Chicago, on the other hand, has declined in speed less steadily, and currently builds skyscrapers much more quickly than New York does.
As a west coast Canadian expatriate, I am curious if you have any ideas of why Toronto and Vancouver are so slow compared to similar American cities?
If you compare them to their "cultural partners," Chicago and Seatle, respectively, they are more than twice as slow.
Local geograhical, social, political, economic, socioeconomic, ethnographic, and business culture and even just day-to-day lifestyle and cost-of-living in Vancouver and Seattle are so similar that that it is remarkable. Indeed, their similarity is treated as a revealed truth by the media, urban planners, and the person on the street and is a bed rock assumption.
I would find such a difference in construction speed amazing
They are much more similar to each other in almost every way than either is to their midwestern and eastern within nation piers.
While they are both very slow for their country, it is amazing to me that Vancouver is SO much slower than Seattle and to the extent this is true must reveal something fundamental.
However, I suspect that there must be some confounding variable in the data here that is being missed.
At the end you note the autocorrelation, but did you go back and check your analysis of square feet per year for this as well? What I’m wondering is if Los Angeles just looks good because it builds a tiny number of huge buildings, and buildings take roughly the same amount of time to complete whether they are huge or not huge (surprising!).
So can we actually look at how many square feet come online per year to compare construction speed or do we need to look at a different metric?
As a Torontonian, the idea that skyscrapers are built more slowly here has quite a bit of resonance! The impact of endless building construction on this city is a topic of frequent discussion in local politics (most notably, how building sites end up restricting traffic flow on adjacent streets for years).
I do wonder whether there is any correlation between building type -- i.e., residential vs. office -- and construction speed? Most of the high-rise construction in Toronto and Vancouver (and there is a lot of it) is residential.
This is fascinating; thanks for doing the analysis. Being Toronto based I've asked for some time now why we build slower than New York (I assume NYC would be the golden standard) but nobody has been able to answer why. Still want to understand that but will now compare with Chicago. Would be challenging to get but might need data such as avg volume of concrete poured per day; pieces of steel hoisted per day; avg # workers on site per day, etc...
I appreciate your transparency with admitting a mistake in your previous work. That said, I enjoy reading your work!
Very fascinating!
As a west coast Canadian expatriate, I am curious if you have any ideas of why Toronto and Vancouver are so slow compared to similar American cities?
If you compare them to their "cultural partners," Chicago and Seatle, respectively, they are more than twice as slow.
Local geograhical, social, political, economic, socioeconomic, ethnographic, and business culture and even just day-to-day lifestyle and cost-of-living in Vancouver and Seattle are so similar that that it is remarkable. Indeed, their similarity is treated as a revealed truth by the media, urban planners, and the person on the street and is a bed rock assumption.
I would find such a difference in construction speed amazing
They are much more similar to each other in almost every way than either is to their midwestern and eastern within nation piers.
While they are both very slow for their country, it is amazing to me that Vancouver is SO much slower than Seattle and to the extent this is true must reveal something fundamental.
However, I suspect that there must be some confounding variable in the data here that is being missed.
You seem to have forgotten a city that would pretty easily top all in this list - Dubai
How much of the difference is a result of steel framing versus reinforced concrete? Most construction in Toronto is RC while Chicago is steel.
At the end you note the autocorrelation, but did you go back and check your analysis of square feet per year for this as well? What I’m wondering is if Los Angeles just looks good because it builds a tiny number of huge buildings, and buildings take roughly the same amount of time to complete whether they are huge or not huge (surprising!).
So can we actually look at how many square feet come online per year to compare construction speed or do we need to look at a different metric?
Very interesting. I suspect an analysis of the time needed to construct subway/metro lines would give a very different result.
> something getting built in China incredibly quickly.
The link (presumably to Youtube) is broken.
As a Torontonian, the idea that skyscrapers are built more slowly here has quite a bit of resonance! The impact of endless building construction on this city is a topic of frequent discussion in local politics (most notably, how building sites end up restricting traffic flow on adjacent streets for years).
I do wonder whether there is any correlation between building type -- i.e., residential vs. office -- and construction speed? Most of the high-rise construction in Toronto and Vancouver (and there is a lot of it) is residential.
This is fascinating; thanks for doing the analysis. Being Toronto based I've asked for some time now why we build slower than New York (I assume NYC would be the golden standard) but nobody has been able to answer why. Still want to understand that but will now compare with Chicago. Would be challenging to get but might need data such as avg volume of concrete poured per day; pieces of steel hoisted per day; avg # workers on site per day, etc...