China to Build 1,318 Skyscrapers in the Next Decade with Investment Exceeding 1.7 Trillion Yuan
Last week, Luohu District in Shenzhen released its latest urban renewal plan, which positions the Caiwuwei area as a financial and commercial core and includes the construction of a 739-meter-tall skyscraper on the original site of the Huanyu Building. The height of 739 meters means that once completed, this building will surpass the current Shanghai Tower, setting a new record for China's skyscrapers and redefining the country's skyline.
Visit
Location Known as "China's Most Awesome Urban Village"
A reporter's visit found that Caiwuwei in Shenzhen is located northwest of Luohu Railway Station, where the former tallest building in Shenzhen, Diwang Building, and the world's eighth tallest building, KK100, stand. For many people outside Shenzhen, Caiwuwei is not well-known, but it was once the largest natural village in Shenzhen, formed as early as the Zhou Dynasty. As an old village in Shenzhen, with continuous urban renewal, only some farmers' houses in Caiwuwei can still be seen in the gaps between high-rises and financial districts, hence it is also called "China's Most Awesome Urban Village."
Hotspot
6 of the World's Top 10 Skyscrapers Are in China
With the unveiling of the 739-meter skyscraper plan in Caiwuwei, the pace of breaking China's skyscraper records is expected to accelerate further. In fact, China is already the country most fascinated by skyscrapers worldwide. According to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat's list at the beginning of the year of the world's top 10 skyscrapers to be completed this year, 6 are in China. Among them, the top one is Shenzhen's Ping An Finance Center, with a total height of 599 meters. According to current rankings, once completed, Ping An Finance Center will become the world's fourth tallest building. Next is Tianjin's Goldin Finance 117, also planned for completion this year, with a total height just 2 meters less than Ping An Finance Center, at 597 meters. In addition, the 530-meter Guangzhou CTF Finance Centre, the 438-meter Wuhan Center, and the 381-meter Eton Place Tower 1 in Dalian and the 370-meter Dalian World Trade Center are also scheduled for completion this year.
Follow-up
Shanghai Becomes the Fastest City in Skyscraper Construction
The so-called skyscraper is actually a term of admiration for tall buildings, without a practical standard—how tall a building must be to be considered a skyscraper is more of a relative concept. Initially, buildings of ten to twenty stories were considered unattainably high, later usually referring to buildings of forty to fifty stories. Definitions of super high-rise buildings vary by region: in mainland China, building codes stipulate that buildings over 100 meters are super high-rise; in Japan and France, buildings over 60 meters are considered super high-rise; in the United States, buildings over 500 feet (about 152 meters) are generally considered skyscrapers. According to the new standards of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, only buildings over 300 meters can be classified as super high-rise.
The world's first super high-rise buildings appeared in New York and Chicago in the United States, mainly due to insufficient land. With the development of reinforced concrete technology and elevators, various skyscrapers began to appear in the United States after World War I, becoming one of the symbols of American developed capitalism. The 102-story Empire State Building, completed in New York in 1931, dominated global building height for nearly half a century. However, at the end of the last century, global skyscraper construction began to shift to Asia, from American dominance to competition between Asia and America. The Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, completed in 1998, marked this shift. Subsequently, Taipei 101 and several tall buildings in Shanghai emerged, making China an important part of global high-rise construction. Until now, although Chicago is still recognized as the city with the most complete skyscraper planning in the world, Shanghai is regarded as the fastest city in skyscraper construction.
Focus
1,318 Skyscrapers to Be Built in China in the Next Decade
Although the world's tallest building record is still held by the Burj Khalifa, which opened in Dubai in 2010, the Chinese are clearly constantly aiming to surpass this height. This does not include the 739-meter building in the Luohu plan in Shenzhen.
Previously, Changsha's Broad Group announced it would build an 838-meter Sky City in the suburbs of Changsha, but it was ultimately halted by the local government.
A noteworthy figure is that a "China Skyscraper City Report" released as early as 2012 pointed out that in the next decade, China will boast a total of 1,318 skyscrapers, ranking first globally, and the total investment in skyscrapers under construction and planned in China will exceed 1.7 trillion yuan. So does China really need so many skyscrapers?
In response, some industry insiders pointed out that the emerging skyscrapers worldwide are no longer mainly for efficient land use and promoting commercial development, but more as a city's face, which is an important reason why the world's tallest buildings continue to appear in Asia.
Data shows that, excluding China, the high-rises over 600 meters currently under construction and planned globally are basically all located in Asia, including Saudi Arabia's Kingdom Tower (1,200 meters), South Korea's Lotte World Tower in Seoul (656 meters), the Philippines' State-owned Casino Building in Manila (665 meters), and Japan's Matsushima International City (601 meters).
Controversy
Do Skyscrapers Still Have Advantages?
In fact, although skyscrapers are more efficient in land use, the disadvantages of building super high-rises in densely populated cities have become a consensus in the architectural community. On the one hand, there are environmental factors: super high-rises invariably use glass curtain walls, which absorb and reflect a large amount of sunlight, causing temperatures around the buildings to be higher than other areas and bringing multiple reflections of light pollution. In addition, skyscrapers create a channel effect, easily forming whirlwinds at the corners of buildings, causing pedestrians to be hit by strong winds when passing. Other data shows that wind speeds up above 10 meters from the ground; for example, at a height of 200 meters, the wind speed is 3 levels higher than at 10 meters, and when wind surrounds a building, it forms a vortex shedding effect, causing severe shaking of the skyscraper, which not only threatens the building's safety but also creates significant noise. This should be particularly noted in coastal areas often troubled by typhoons.
Problems such as traffic issues, building shaking, ground displacement, land subsidence, and radio wave obstacles caused by overly dense construction of skyscrapers are gradually emerging, and many skyscrapers have been questioned since their inception. Especially after the "9/11" incident in 2001, issues of escape from disasters such as fires and earthquakes in high-rises have become new concerns. Some architectural experts point out that the world's tallest fire ladder is only 130 meters, and residents on floors above that height are actually gambling with the odds of disaster.
In addition, with the rise of skyscrapers, the economic "Lawrence's Law" has also attracted attention. In 1999, Deutsche Bank securities analyst Andrew Lawrence, after studying a century of economic history, found that the start of construction of the world's tallest buildings is highly correlated with severe fluctuations in the business cycle. He believes that the construction of the world's super tall buildings is usually a precursor to economic recession.
Furthermore, CBRE senior director Lin Tianchun once said that for developers of super high-rise buildings, the payback period is basically around 10 years. If the market is in a state of oversupply, the cycle for developers to recoup their investment will be further extended, and these are all things that need to be fully prepared for at the beginning of skyscraper construction.