Our Work

Trade Fact of the Week: 38 of the world’s 100 tallest buildings have opened since 2019.

• May 1, 2024
• Ed Gresser

FACT: 38 of the world’s 100 tallest buildings have opened since 2019.

THE NUMBERS: U.S.’ share of the world’s 100 tallest buildings –

WHAT THEY MEAN:

An early architecture critic, the Venerable Rodolf Glaber of the Dijon Abbey, looks back from somewhere around the year 1040 to Europe’s turn-of-the-millennium cathedral boom:

“It was as though the world had shaken herself and cast off her old age, and clothed herself everywhere in a white garment of churches…”

Then this year: Merdeka 118, the pride of Kuala Lumpur, opened January 24 as the world’s second-tallest building and fourth officially “mega-tall”* skyscraper.  At 2,233 feet or 681 meters, and overtopped only by Dubai’s 2,787 foot/870 meters Burj Khalifa, M-118 is the most recent in Asia’s newly built ‘steel-and-glass garment’ of tall buildings.  To be precise, the New York-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat reports that of the world’s 100 tallest buildings, 35 have opened since 2019, and 62 of the top 100 since 2014. Using computer-aided design and new alloys developed in the last generation — twisting facades to minimize wind torque, lightweight alloy cladding to resist heat, and so forth — they have metaphorically put the American skyline a bit in the shade.

U.S. urban skyscrapers using steel-girder-and-curtain-wall technology surpassed Glaber’s stone-on-stone cathedrals as the tallest buildings in the 1920s. As recently as 1990 the U.S. was home to 9 of the world’s top 10 buildings, and 87 of its top 100. The current count is about half Chinese, with the United Arab Emirates and the U.S. a tier down, and eight other mostly East and Southeast Asian countries making up the rest.  A rundown of the Council’s current 100-highest list looks like this:

(1) 46 in mainland China, including five of the top ten. The Shanghai Tower (2015, 2073 feet) joins M-118, Burj Khalifa, and the Makkah Clock Tower in Riyadh as one of four officially-recognized “megatalls” (above 1,968 feet); the 5th-ranked Ping An Tower in Shenzhen (2017) just misses at 1,965 feet.  Five more of the top 100 are in Hong Kong.

(2) 15 in the United Arab Emirates, including top-ranked Burj Kh., with fourteen in Dubai City.  Dubai for the past twenty years has held a lead over New York as the city with the highest ultra-tall count.

(3) 14 in the United States. Eight are in New York, with One World Trade Center seventh in the world at 1,776 feet.  The Empire State Building, open since 1931 and by far the oldest building in the top 100, ranks 53rd. Chicago has five, and Philadelphia has one, the 95th-place Comcast Tower. No other U.S. city has a top-100 building. (LA’s Wilshire Grand ranked 88th when it opened in 2017, but has already dropped to 104th.) By way of comparison, in 1990 17 U.S. cities had at least one of the world’s top 100 buildings, and New York alone had 23.

(4) 20 elsewhere: Five in Malaysia, another five in Russia, three in Korea, two apiece in Taiwan and Saudi Arabia, one each in Vietnam, Kuwait, and Indonesia.

By way of consolation, though the American skyline may no longer tower over its rivals, the U.S. intellectual role in skyscraper design and construction remains very big. Ultra-tall buildings are highly “globalized” efforts; the builders of Merdeka-118, for example, turned to New York-based LERA (Leslie E. Robertson Associates) to oversee its structural engineering, while U.S. firms Fisher Marantz Stone, Barker Mohandas, and CPP handled vertical transport, lighting systems, and wind stress design. (As well as Samsung’s construction wing for the building contract, Australian and Hong Kong architects, and a Finnish elevator company.) Overall, specialized U.S. architecture and engineering firms in Chicago, New York, New England, and California designed or co-designed nine of the ten buildings at the top of the current top 100 list, and five of the ten tallest openings in 2022 and 2023.

FURTHER READING

New York’s Council on Tall Building and Urban Habitat lists the world’s 100 tallest buildings in 2024, 2020, 2010, 2000, 1990, and 1980.  The 2025 list, assuming buildings now in the final-construction stage open as planned, will bring on 11 new ones of 1,145 feet and up, and by necessity drop numbers 90-100 off.  On net this means China’s share will rise from 46 to 47.  Dubai will also get another, and Cairo and Istanbul will join.  The U.S., Korea, Malaysia, and Russia will lose one each.

Merdeka 118.

… Samsung Construction explains the concrete — 400,000 tons of it, enough to “cover a football field to a height of 19 stories in one solid block,” and braced by 40,000 km of rebar.

… and structural engineering lead Leslie E. Robertson Associates summarizes design.

Burj Khalifa features 160 floors, a spiral shape to minimize upper-story wind torque, specialized glass, and heat-resistant glazed aluminum/stainless steel cladding on the outer walls.

One World Trade Center (2014) at 1776 feet, ranks seventh worldwide and tops the U.S.

And the current ‘ultimate project’ – LERA, in partnership with Chicago-based Kohn Pederson Fox, has the most ambitious proposal of all: a 5,700-foot “Sky Mile Tower” in Tokyo, twice as high as Burj Khalifa and burying every conceivable competitor.  The “vision” outline of the Sky Mile Tower.

A brief survey of tall-building record-holders and techniques:

Here’s a list of the world’s tallest buildings and their opening dates (or best estimates) if there isn’t a precise one available:

* Not counting free-standing towers like the 555-foot Washington Monument (1884) or the 986-foot Eiffel Tower (1889).
** Estimated including the original spire, which fell down in 1548.

Pyramids & Ziggurats: The 481-foot Great Pyramid outside Cairo held the world’s tallest record for 3,800 years. Not just a lame pile of rocks, the G.P. is a “smart pyramid” with a complex interior network of chambers, tunnels, and ventilation shafts meant for practical, religious, and perhaps astronomical purposes, all pointing to sophisticated though unrecorded architectural drafting and engineering techniques. The slightly younger ziggurats in neighboring Sumer and Akkad were made of brick, a squishier material which meant they couldn’t be as tall, and topped out around 170 feet. The Great Pyramid

Cathedrals: Designed without printing presses, standardized weights and measures, or mathematics beyond flat-plane geometry, cathedrals overtook pyramids in the 14th century.  As of 1900 they still made up all of the world’s top 20; and except for Philadelphia’s 548-foot City Hall (1901) they remain today the world’s tallest stone-on-stone buildings. Glaber on the 1000-AD cathedral boom.

… and the Ulm Munster, tallest existing cathedral.

Skyscrapers: Stone buildings can’t get much above 500 feet, since the weight of the upper tiers will crack the load-bearing pillars and walls beneath. Steel-skeleton buildings with curtain walls designed in Chicago and New York solved the problem. Meanwhile, the Otis hydraulic elevator system settled the 50-story-climb-to-the-top challenge, and architects set aside a few floors for water pumps so penthouse suites and executive offices could get toilets that flush and faucets that spout water rather than sucking air. Here’s the Empire State Building looking ahead to its 2031 centennial.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

Read the full email and sign up for the Trade Fact of the Week.