Why do desert cities have such shitty skylines?

[locolife]

Since the largest desert cities are also the newest big US cities it makes sense that the skylines are still immature, especially compared to old eastern cities like Boston, Philly, etc.. Arizona has only been a state for a bit over 100 years, although the area has been inhabited for 1000's of years.

Phoenix is beginning to add quite a bit of density now and is growing into it's own. The airport location limits downtown Phoenix height but the sheer quantity of buildings are growing substantially. Here's a recent photo I took.

[Phil McAvity]

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

Part of it is because the cities are new. Las Vegas was just a little town 75 years ago.

Another part of it is cheaper land. There's no real need for landowners to build upward.

Finally, part of it is that the metro areas are not that big. Las Vegas doesn't really go much farther than Boulder City or Summerlin. You can drive 20 miles from Downtown Las Vegas and you're in the middle of the desert. But 20 miles from Downtown Boston are places like Brockton, Foxboro, Framingham, Waltham, etc.

Firstly, the age and growth rate of a city just determines how many older buildings there are, but has no bearing on the size of the skyline but I think the idea of cheaper land in the desert makes sense although comparing metro Lost Wages to metro Bwawstun is silly because Bwawstun is over twice the population of Lost Wages

Originally Posted by locolife

Since the largest desert cities are also the newest big US cities it makes sense that the skylines are still immature, especially compared to old eastern cities like Boston, Philly, etc.. Arizona has only been a state for a bit over 100 years, although the area has been inhabited for 1000's of years.

Phoenix is beginning to add quite a bit of density now and is growing into it's own. The airport location limits downtown Phoenix height but the sheer quantity of buildings are growing substantially. Here's a recent photo I took.

Thank you for ironically proving my point. This is a good skyline for a city of a million people except Phoenix is 5X that. Just look at cities with similar metro populations as Phoenix like Bwawstun and San Francisco and in terms of skylines, they both annihilate Phoenix

[Obadno]

Its because western cities developed post vehicle. The density of older cities is because they built out their cores 100 years ago and suburbs have grown around the existing central node.

Phoenix, LA, Vegas, Tucson, SLC etc were several independent towns in farmland that grew into each other making the development more broad and less tall and centralized.

LA has a tiny downtown too relative to its regional population.