Public perception of towers

[Lecom]

Originally Posted by Trantor

actually, brazilians at the same time love to live in highrises, but hate other highrises. And brazilians are not used to tall buildings, since there is NONE in Brazil (tallest is 170 meters).

brazilians are used to 70-110 meter tall buildings. Those we have in abundance.

Just because you don't have world-class tall skyscrapers, doesn't mean you don't have tall buildings. A 70, even a 50, meter building is a tall building, much taller than what the overwhelming majority of Americans lives in.

[Trantor]

^well, a 10 story building is taller than a house. But its hard to consider it as a tall building.

[Jasoncw]

Most people in most cities would consider that to be a tall building if it was in their neighborhood.

Relative to a major city's downtown it's not tall, but compared to everywhere else, it is tall.

[CEO]

malec, I think this varies based on the city you live in.

Among citizens of Dubai, if there is any objection by the general public to building tall towers, they would typically quote one of these reasons:

1. We don't need more expatriates coming in to live in these towers and mess up the demographics even more.
2. This is pointless and is just an ego trip and one of the signs of the nearness of the End of Times, as quoted by Gabriel in the Qudsi Hadith (second in importance after the Quran) in reference to barefoot bedouin shepherds of Arabia: "You will see the barefoot ones, the naked, the destitute, the shepherds and camelherds take pride in building tall structures in abundance."
3. Construction material is getting too expensive with the huge demand... we can't afford building homes anymore.
4. There's too much pollution with this construction, increased traffic and the build quality and finishing is poor.
5. I'm not interested in living in a tower, I want a garden and more privacy.

Generally though, residents are accepting of skyscrapers and they're used to them.

There are specific areas for them and people still get to keep their suburban villas and low-rise beach resorts, cafes and malls for middle class to rich (Jumeirah/Barsha), have a midrise area with all kinds of shops and restaurants for the poor and middle class (Bur Dubai/Deira), and a highrise district with restaurants/shops for the upper middle class and rich (Sheikh Zayed Rd/Dubai Marina).

Most skyscrapers on Sheikh Zayed Road have shops/restaurants at the base and it's very vibrant along each side in good weather (despite 10 lanes of a highway in the middle - a service road separates it).

[CEO]

In Ireland, the majority of people dislike tall buildings, but still I notice they love traveling to American and Australian cities that have a lot of skyscrapers, and they complain that Ireland is boring.

I think maybe it's because there's a lot of bureaucracy and tax, and it's pretty slow for new developments to be approved and constructed. A skyscraper would probably cost a lot to build.

The public transport is pretty bad in Dublin also... they've only recently discussed plans for a metro. They wouldn't be able to handle the traffic/parking situation with a dense highrise area downtown. Although there have been 'donut' proposals to build highrises on the outskirts of the city.

The biggest objection to building high seems to come from those wanting to conserve the Georgian image. I think old buildings can still look good even with a glassy scraper right next to them. The contrast is interesting... and if Dubliners didn't think so, they wouldn't have built some of the new futuristic looking bridges over the Liffey or built glassy lowrises along its banks.

An excerpt from Lonely Planet that I thought was interesting:

“Ireland has long since outgrown its forty shades of green and all of the other shamrock-laden clichés that never really did it justice,” says Davenport, “But the images still endure: inviting you and millions of others to kiss the Blarney Stone, ride a jaunting car around the Killarney lakes and eat an Irish stew. But isn’t modern Ireland all about motorways and multiculturalism, commerce and cosmopolitans? Surely we should be known as much for our cool café culture and buzzing music scene as ancient monuments and dramatic coastline.”

Dublin-born Davenport defines Ireland as contradiction. He says “we get really excited - and are rightly proud of - our economic prosperity and dynamic development but as soon as we meet a visitor we can’t wait to pour them a pint, break out the bodhrán and get the laugher going over stories, exaggerations and jokes. We needn’t be afraid of the clichés – after all a nice Guinness in a traditional pub is a great night out – but we need to realise that, like many of our European cousins, we can promote modernity and history side-by-side.”

Some people say cities need human-scale planning, amenity and usable public space... which I think is a load of bull, towers aren't filled with foam and they would leave more room for parks/greenery in the downtown area if the transport/parking is sorted beforehand.

Glass is 'bling' for some cities. It's a matter of taste.

[malec]

I think here in Ireland it's our habit to complain about anything. Even on archiseek they're all saying "oh, Ireland sucks at this, we failed, blah blah...", whatever way it is, people will still complain. I recon another reason why people don't want towers here is because they're afraid they'll become like the ballymun flats.

One thing that worries me is that while it's really difficult for a tower to get built here, they have no problem granting permission to destroy entire blocks to build massive and bland groundscrapers. They're usually just slightly taller than the surrounding buildings so their ugly heads are in view anyway and each new proposal is blander than the last.


Typical example in Dublin.

They chose this:




over this:

[CEO]

Woot?

Nevermind.. I don't care anyway, I won't be in Dublin when it's built.

I'm very familiar with the opinions of Archiseek people (most of them are architects BTW). I've discussed this with them loads of times. Somebody once told me they can't build skyscrapers in Ireland because they suffer from "vertical rain". I still don't know what that means.