17 most beautiful skylines

[IcedCowboyCoffee]

These sorts of conversations are always baffling to follow because everyone speaks with their own unspoken qualifications and definitions. No one can even seem to agree on what a skyline is, and these conversations always become about the most beautiful cities and not the most beautiful skylines.

Is a skyline not the shape of the line formed in the sky by a city's architecture? A city can be beautiful at street level but have an absolutely dull skyline (Paris), and vice versa (Dallas).
And density is not a qualifier for beautiful; a city can be dense and have row after row of skyscrapers but form a boring skyline. So simply having a bunch of buildings does not a beautiful skyline make.
Should nature even count? If you've got mountains/water in the backdrop from one viewpoint, then you inevitably lose them when you view the skyline from the opposite side, so can that nature really be said to be part of the skyline if you lose it depending on from where you're looking at the actual skyline from?

[Crawford]

Chicago arguably had more skyline peaks than NYC. Definitely more supertalls for a period, and fewer skinny and/or insubstantial (wimpy spires, etc.) towers. Willis, JHC and Aon are just beasts.

But Chicago never had more than a fraction of NYC highrises. It's something like a 7:1 ratio. NYC's core was always huge relative to Chicago, and highrises in NYC always covered far more geography. And the skyline always had more depth and complexity.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by DZH22

I would say it's when it peaked relative to other major skylines, particularly NYC and Toronto in North America, many of the Asian cities, plus Dubai and maybe Moscow.

Oh ok, maybe in that sense.

But I've never compared Chicago to other cities

Only ever to itself.

Cuz no homer has ever homered as hard as this homer!

[Martin Mtl]

I find that quality and balance remain more important than quantity. For that reason, to me, Chicago has the best-looking skyline. For me, again, it beats NY, let alone other NA cities.

[Notonfoodstamps]

Numbers in isolation don't really do much from an aesthetic standpoint. Sure they add depth and grandure but theres plenty of massive skylines that aren't what I'd call "beautiful" in a colloquial sense.

Size, layout, architecture, massing, scenery all play are roll i.e Chicago > NYC or Vancouver > Toronto.

[Crawford]

I guess it's all subjective, but I can't think of any architecturally distinctive towers in Vancouver, while Toronto has a ton. You have lots of Mies, Calatrava and the like. The financial district is pretty thick with renowned towers.

And NYC has far more highrise icons than Chicago, from basically every era, so don't get that either. I think very few would agree they have comparable notable prewars, or comparable towers of more recent distinction. I mean, ESB, Chrysler, 30 Rock, Woolworth, Flatiron, etc. For Chicago, I guess Wrigley and Tribune would be most famous? I'd say those would be more on the level of Metlife, GE or 40 Wall.

And obviously numbers matter, a lot. It has to be a big weight in the overall metric. Otherwise you can really make the Jacksonville>Toronto arguments.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

And NYC has far more highrise icons than Chicago, from basically every era, so don't get that either. I think very few would agree they have comparable notable prewars, or comparable towers of more recent distinction. I mean, ESB, Chrysler, 30 Rock, Woolworth, Flatiron, etc. For Chicago, I guess Wrigley and Tribune would be most famous? I'd say those would be more on the level of Metlife, GE or 40 Wall.

Chicago's pre-1960s skyline was much shorter than NYC's. According to Wikipedia, Chicago only has two towers taller than 600 feet (180m) that were built before 1960. The tallest buildings in NYC list only goes down to 650 feet, but NYC likely had dozens of buildings that tall by 1960.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I guess it's all subjective, but I can't think of any architecturally distinctive towers in Vancouver, while Toronto has a ton. You have lots of Mies, Calatrava and the like. The financial district is pretty thick with renowned towers.

Toronto has loads of notable skyscrapers by notable architects, but none of its towers were designed by Calatrava that I am aware of.

[PhillyRising]

Milwaukee?

Philadelphia has a way better skyline.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by DZH22

Basically, however strong you feel the current boom is, it hasn't been as strong as the booms of most of Chicago's rival skylines on a global scale.

Yep. NYC's skyline has been totally transformed in the last 10-15 years, and that's saying a lot given how hard it is to create a visible impact. A bunch of new icons/landmarks have been created:

432 Park
One Vanderbilt
53W53
8 Spruce
Brooklyn Tower
56 Leonard
One Manhattan Square
1 WTC
3 WTC
Hudson Yards
Billionaires' Row

And this isn't even including 270 Park, 350 Park, 175 Park, 2 WTC, The Torch, and more.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Toronto has loads of notable skyscrapers by notable architects, but none of its towers were designed by Calatrava that I am aware of.

Brookfield Place, in the financial district, has that famous Calatrava interior:

https://bharchitects.com/en/project/...rly-bce-place/

SOM were the exterior architects, but it's the interior that's really iconic.

Granted, Toronto doesn't have anything close to NYC or Chicago, but compared to Vancouver I'd say it's pretty loaded with iconic towers from big-deal architects.