Newark and New York? Jersey City, yeah, but Newark? They're a good ten miles of suburban character and wetland apart.

Sorry. For some reason I was thinking Jersey City, which I think you kinda picked up on.

Newark definitely not.

Here's the list for everything over 400 feet. I actually think this is a better measurement since there are many more cities with buildings over 200 feet outside of their downtowns than ones with 400 footers outside of their downtowns.

Cities with buildings over 400 feet. I'm not listing all of them either, and only ones in North America.

New York - 439

Chicago - 198

Toronto - 92

Panama City, Panama - 89

Miami - 61

Houston - 54

Las Vegas - 43
San Francisco - 43

Atlanta - 36
Mexico City - 35
Los Angeles - 34
Calgary - 32

Dallas - 29
Philadelphia - 28
Boston - 27
Seattle - 24
Sunny Isles, FL - 24
Montreal - 21

Minneapolis - 19
Denver - 16
Pittsburgh - 15
Austin - 14
Detroit - 14
Charlotte - 13
Jersey City - 13
San Diego - 13
Honolulu - 12
New Orleans - 12
Cleveland - 10
Columbus - 10

Kansas City - 9
Miami Beach - 9
Baltimore - 8
Cincinnati - 7
Tampa - 7
Atlantic City - 6
Fort Worth - 6
Indianapolis - 6
Nashville - 6
Tulsa - 6
Edmonton - 5
Jacksonville - 5
Milwaukee - 5
Monterrey, Mex - 5
Oklahoma City - 5
Orlando - 5
Portland - 5
St. Louis - 5
Bellevue, WA - 4
Hartford, CT - 4
Louisville - 4
Mississauga, Ont, Canada - 4
San Antonio - 4
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic - 4
Fort Lauderdale - 3
St. Paul - 3
Burnaby, BC, Canada - 2
Newark - 2
Omaha - 2
Phoenix - 2
Rochester - 2
Sacramento - 2
Albany - 1
Aventura, FL - 1
Hamilton, Ont, Canada - 1
Oakland - 1
Arlington, VA - 0

Back in the day people would just add up every single building height above whatever cut off point they picked, and then would compare the numbers. It isn't perfect, but it does indicate the intensity of height you can expect for any given city.

Here's a source for the best quantitative skyline measure that I know of. 90 meter cutoff, and every meter over 90 is worth 1 point.

Austin is 129th in the world as of the last calculation.

http://tudl0867.home.xs4all.nl/skylines.html

That list has been around for a while. I remember when Houston was number 4; then the boom in Asia and the Middle East occurred.

Sadly, the boom in Asia is largely Rainey St.-sized apartment complexes (we're talking 5,000-10,000 units) that sit mostly empty. Many of them are owned for the sake of "investment" but sit empty. There are so many ghost towns over here it's ridiculous. I'll attest that many new additions to Asian skylines are empty boxes in the sky - the exception of which are those that are built in central business districts (non-residential buildings). For those of you who hit on the importance of the street experience (and I agree 100%), imagine blocks of mostly empty high-rises, albeit some built with ground-level retail, all sitting empty. It's actually kinda creepy. It also has added to the endless sprawl of many cities over here - but think Houston suburbs on a Chinese scale - and all six floors or more. I'll take slow and steady over mindless development any day.

That's a fascinating list. Thanks for posting it. Not sure any city will catch Austin any time soon in terms of skyline growth, but Nashville is sure trying! Our number will likely close to double within six or seven years.

Nashville definitely got a great start.

That is really fascinating. I've wondered about that and about development in Dubai, a city of about 2.1 million with real-estate space that seems to almost rival New York city (8.4 million)—are those buildings occupied at all?

I don't know anything about Dubai. My experience is primarily in the east of Asia - China and surrounding countries. I know a lot of buildings are only partially used in China, even with the massive population.

This is a bit off-topic, but I think some of you may find it interesting: with around 1.3 billion people, China has an urban population of 50.6% in 2011 (some estimates put it at 53% as of 2013). Migrant workers are leaving the farms and flooding into the cities looking for work. People are building "mixed-use developments" (though it stretches the term a bit) at an alarming rate, but the truth is the housing costs prevent your average Chinese from being able to afford them. Rent is surprisingly cheap compared to buying, however. It makes no sense. We had an apartment in another city that cost about $340/mo USD to rent, but it would have easily cost (at least) $250,000 USD to buy. Crazy, right?

Most migrant workers are room-renters - a 3/4 bedroom apartment is split into rooms (even the living room is walled off to make another room) and the rooms are rented to factory workers. Density goes up, but taking care of the complexes and neighborhoods go down because there is little personal investment. Also, as factory workers are somewhat nomadic (go where the money is), the neighborhoods lack a mature feeling, even after several years. This is different than neighborhoods in city cores, of course, but it's largely similar.

All this to say, a lot of people look to cities in Asia as encouraging developments - things get done quickly and they're flashy and nice-looking, but the quality is often lacking and little maintenance causes 2-year-old buildings to look 20-years-old. I'm proud of my hometown (Austin) and the way it's developing. I'm looking forward to ten years from now - and more! I hope it eventually gets a quality mass-transit system. Many other things are already in place. Over time, it's going to be even more impressive than now and the potential is great. Think of the connections between cities in the Texas Triangle once high speed rail becomes a reality - and with Houston and Dallas already having decent transit developments with more in the works, San Antonio hoping to do the same, and Austin (dragging its feet, but talking a lot nonetheless), it'd be a great marriage between these four metro areas. Okay...done dreaming now.

Thanks for letting me share all of this - back on topic now.:)

Not quite sure where to put these photos. Some screening is going up on the new parking garage at 5th and Brazos:

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8636/...d4c71aa1_b.jpg


And next door at the Littlefield apartments you can see the redone windows and balconies:

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8661/...c980c651_c.jpg

I like the screening on the garage.

I don't know if this has been discussed or not, but this was in the news yesterday:

http://www.burntorangenation.com/201...sketball-venue

If they tore down the Statesman building, it would be great. Hopefully they build the arena in a way that conforms to the street/sidewalk and that helps create walkability and accessibility to (future) public transit nodes.

There's a thread for it in the Austin section, and it's not very popular.

Agreed - it should be on campus (I support the location immediately south of the soccer/track stadium). If it works out to have city involvement, great, if not, the city should build its own event center. The city is easily large enough to support its own. If that's the case, the Statesman location might be good for it, but traffic would be a hurdle.

I am all for a new stadium downtown with a connected subway station :cheers:

Amen!

Taken this weekend along I-35 south (2/21/15). Seaholm and Northshore under construction.

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-z...C_0698-001.JPG

I was traveling on Barton Springs Rd. last night and notice the Aspen Heights will make a great impacted from Butler Park. All these towers are lining up like I have never seen before. So proud of Austin. :)

I need to get out and take some pictures of the full skyline from a distance.

Just because this thread doesn't get updated too often...the big news this week is that demo begins next week for dual branded Aloft and Element Hotel on Congress Ave. Here's the rendering:
http://i1121.photobucket.com/albums/...ntownAloft.png
http://www.austintexas.gov/edims/document.cfm?id=206616

Here's one of the local news stories about it:
http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/bl...store-new.html

I drove by that site yesterday. It's skinny but it's so long. This is going to be a wide building looking at it from the north or south, even with the setback.

The lot is 160 feet long, and the setback requirement is 40 feet (from Congress). So the tower itself will be 120 feet long. That's not too bad really.

What would be considered long? For instance, what is JW Marriott or one of those where a wall essentially takes the entire block? I'm not as up on these sorts of details as many of you guys.

The JW Marriott is around 275 feet long. So yeah, almost twice as long.

I wasn't suggesting it was a bad thing. Just made the comment because you can't really tell that by looking at the renderings.

:cheers:

Photo courtesy of Austin Business Journal

From Mt. Bonell? Or is there a better vantage point?

I'd recommend the view from Barton Creek Mall. The mall is about 300 feet higher in elevation than the Congress Ave. bridge downtown. To me, the view of downtown from there was spectacular even before downtown was much to look at. Something about the way the view groups the buildings.

I think the very best view of the skyline from the west side is on 360 between the mall and Bee Caves Road. I can't remember the name of that intersection but there are a couple of office buildings there. If you look east there's a valley and the entire city skyline from the river past UT just spreads across the horizon.

Go to the Land and Cattle/Ihop location on NB Mopac, and go to the parking garages, I go to the closest to the city, its open and you can park low and walk up or just drive to the top. I have only gone on weekends when no ones there.

This spot 30.264440, -97.778999

Best vantage points:

Zilker clubhouse
Barton Creek Mall
East Riverside driving in

Jdawgboy is correct...Loop 360 between Westbank Dr. and Lost Creek Blvd. (above Valley View Elementary School).

http://www.statesman.com/news/busine...owntown/nkWMs/

Hotel Van Zandt

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8616/...560c4abc_b.jpg

Millenium Rainey

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7584/...67ff4193_b.jpg

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8688/...f94a2098_b.jpg

Just took these (yesterday and today).

Colorado (on the right)- beautiful shot
http://i1300.photobucket.com/albums/...pskpcfwgmw.jpg

I forgot what's going up here. A hotel and something else...and apparently the hotel is still a dirt field
http://i1300.photobucket.com/albums/...psxg5cv9nz.jpg

Greenwater project
http://i1300.photobucket.com/albums/...pswjrkwv5a.jpg

I nice view from the convention center. Austin is shaping up nicely.
http://i1300.photobucket.com/albums/...psl50goeyx.jpg

^Cranes galore!

Green Water and Seaholm at sunset

http://i.imgur.com/bGtLcC0l.jpg

(click for full size image)

Looks like they raised the crane on the Seaholm, I was wondering when that would happen.

Very sweet... wow.

Austin is truly a forest of cranes!

More cranes are coming. Two crane bases are on site for an office tower that is going up directly behind the U/C tower on the right in this photo.

http://i1300.photobucket.com/albums/...pswjrkwv5a.jpg

The higher it goes, I'm really liking the step-back on this one. It'll be great once they start the final step-back also.

That view will have a nice sunset vista between a slight canyon of buildings...very nice!

New 99 Trinity renderings. Looking sleeker! X-posted from the 99 Trinity thread in the Austin sub-forum:

Seaholm district rising with Market district in back.
http://imgur.com/mQKi50Kl.jpg

Visited Austin for the first time this weekend.

WOW! Your city is booming.

Stayed at the JW Marriott (which was just completed). Very cool hotel.

Will be watching this thread with envy from now on :)

That's a lovely building. Really like the curved front and back and especially that curved glass facade at the top of the river-facing side. It would look good clustered with the Bowie and Monarch.
Sure hope it doesn't go through a budget fitting redesign and become a short shapeless block.

I suspect those 99 Trinity renderings were the original ones before the site plan was withdrawn for resubmittal. I hope any changes are not a downgrade.