[mhays]

I don't know why they work in Sao Paulo.

In the US you can't go that skinny very easily. I'll focus on that.

Most of it is inefficiency. What comes to mind:
--You're paying just as much (or nearly) for certain things on every 4,000-square-foot floor as you would on a 10,000-square-foot floor -- two sets of stairs, elevators, plumbing risers, and so on.
--You're renting a smaller percentage of each floorplate.
--The exterior surface is a larger percentage of total cost.
--The building structure costs more per square foot.

There's also parking. In the US it's often important. Parking is only efficient on larger sites. On smaller sites a large percentage of the total space is ramps, elevators, and stairs. The issue is larger when you also have a tower above. The upshot is that any building that needs a lot of parking will be on a big site, and it wouldn't make sense to do an extremely skinny tower on a large site.

There are upsides to skinny towers of course. With a 50x50-foot floorplate, every big room will have a window.