July 22, 2007
Shanghai 21st on ranking of cities with skyscrapers?
Jakob Montrasio points us to a most unbelievable ranking of the world's top 25 cities with skyscrapers published by the German magazine Spiegel:
1: Hongkong, China. 7422 skyscrapers.
2: New York City, USA. 5445 skyscrapers.
3: Singapore 3503 skyscrapers. 4 million people.
4: São Paulo, Brazil. 3012 skyscrapers. 10 million people.
5: Seoul, Korea. 2831 skyscrapers.
6: Istanbul, Turkey. 2093 skyscrapers. Over 10 million people.
7: Tokyo, Japan. 2074 skyscrapers. 12 million people.
8: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 1925 skyscrapers. 6 million people.
9: Toronto, Canada. 1612 skyscrapers.
10: Buenos Aires, Argentina. 1438 skyscrapers.
11: London, UK. 1295 skyscrapers.
12: Chicago, USA. 1040 skyscrapers.
13: Sydney, Australia. 804 skyscrapers.
14: Osaka, Japan. 740 skyscrapers.
15: Mexico City, Mexico. 722 skyscrapers.
16: Bangkok, Thailand. 710 skyscrapers.
17: Caracas, Venezuela. 670 skyscrapers. 5.1 million people.
18: Madrid, Spain. 651 skyscrapers. 3 million people.
19: Milan, Italy. 646 skyscrapers. 4 million people.
20: Curitiba, Brazil. No information how many skyscrapers. 1.7 million people?
21: SHANGHAI! CHINA! 549 skyscrapers! And over 300 more under construction at the moment!
22: Mumbai, India (Maharashtra). 529 skyscrapers. 11 million people.
23: Vancouver, Canada. 520 skyscrapers.
24: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 517 skyscrapers.
25: Moscow, Russia. 456 skyscrapers.
Apparently, the Spiegel got its information from such reliable sources of information as Emporis, Wikipedia and Yahoo, but seriously, Shanghai has just 549 skyscrapers?! That was probably 15 years ago! The one-year old NBC Today report featured above tells us that Shanghai has at least 4000 skyscrapers ("double the 2,000 in NYC" they add - some serious discrepancy in the definition of skyscrapers here!) and is planning to add another 1000 by the end of the decade. We understand the Spiegel has a Shanghai correspondent, but maybe the editors just never bothered to check the facts with him/her?
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he he, how offended you look...
My hometown's highest building has 12 floors... And we are very happy for that! BTW, I used to live in one of those 12th floors.
Thanks for posting my article!
What's really weird is that the Spiegel magazine is actually one of Germany's best magazines and usually very, very professional. But this article here from them just made me angry...
SYDNEY has more skyscrapers than Shanghai?! LOL. The authors obviously have no clue.
This post would be much more useful if there was a definition of the word 'skyscraper'. Wikipedia offers this definition: "a tall habitable building, usually higher than 150 metres (500 feet)" which is the equivalent of around 40 stories. However way you look at it however, the stats above are flawed.
Interested in cities and skyscrapers? Check out the SkyscraperPage at:
http://www.skyscraperpage.com
skyscrapers page is a good reference. Also the definition of "skyscraper" is kind of dubious for a lot of these rankings
Ok, so what is qualification for a building to be considered a Skyscraper? I can't imagine that Chicago has more skyscrapers than Shanghai - that's nuts.