Canada's 50 Tallest Proposals

[WhipperSnapper]

Those industries will be flipped on their heads as a recession is inevitable and there will be less venture capital and will be concentrated towards the impact of the coronavirus. . It wouldn't surprised me if some of the darlings are quietly absorbed for a fraction of their values while others explode out of nowhere. The overall space requirement may not change much. The change will be in their stability as anchor tenants.

[TorontoDrew]

Moved

[FrankieFlowerpot]

Nowhere near tall enough for this thread

[koops65]

The cut-off nowadays is 188 metres.

50 tallest proposals diagram: http://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=89111295

[caltrane74]

Thanks for the update.

[Maldive]

Originally Posted by koops65

The cut-off nowadays is 188 metres.

50 tallest proposals diagram: http://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=89111295

Hmmm... pages of Toronto proposals (with a few interruptions).

That diagram even tops the serial proposal/marriage resumes of the Gabor Sisters (Zsa Zsa, Eva, Magda).

[LeftCoaster]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

Many thanks for your response. It's something that has come up in conversation but, most of us originate from traditional users. It is nice to get perspective from someone with a broader sense.

Or I could just be wrong:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business...en-50-of-its-offices-after-the-pandemic/

[WhipperSnapper]

Indirectly relevant

China has apparently banned towers over 500 metres and severely restricted towers eclipsing 250 metres. If true, this is a major impact on worldwide tall tower stats.

[333609543]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

Indirectly relevant

China has apparently banned towers over 500 metres and severely restricted towers eclipsing 250 metres. If true, this is a major impact on worldwide tall tower stats.

What reason would China have to do this though?

[rbt]

Originally Posted by 333609543

What reason would China have to do this though?

Seems to be mostly safety as they have stricter fire/earthquake/energy requirements for all buildings over 100m; these requirements become more significant with size.

Also partly that they think they're ugly/destructive in context; the height restriction came with improved protection of natural areas and historic buildings., banning copy-cat designs, and clamps down on 'huge, foreign-worshipping and wacky' buildings.

[WhipperSnapper]

Don't they have local planning? It's odd to impose a national height limit in order to preserve historical areas. It's kinda too late to revert back to China pre 1990s now that every urban area has international commercial designed glass and steel supertalls. What's the difference pumping water 200 metres or 350 metres? It's just more pumps.

My gut tells me China can no longer afford to develop these towers.

[osmo]

From my understanding the Shanghai Tower has been an economic failure as China's megatalls was a government lead project with little connection to any reality of demand. Shanghai Tower sits with the majority of the building empty with no remedy in sight due to awkward floor plates made due by the engineering design.

One could guess this new rule is China saving themselves from themselves to just out the idea of flirting with the idea of more massive megatalls out of the question

[Martin Mtl]

This explains a bit.

https://www.theb1m.com/video/why-shanghai-tower-failed

[Spocket]

Interesting news to me. All I can find is information on Beijing instituting height restrictions. Are you sure this is nationwide?

Edit: It seems that there is a directive from the central government but it does still allow for over 500 meters in "special circumstances". Of course, in China, that just means that Beijing has direct control rather than regional officials.

[urbandreamer]

Maybe they found spending 5 minutes in a highrise elevator kind of stupid with the virus going around?

[WhipperSnapper]

I've only seen the same blurbs repackaged over and over. They read as a nationwide ban on anything over 500 metres and special circumstances for anything over 250 metres. No real depth or explanation.

Re: Shanghai Tower

The Middle East is full of failed mega projects too. Dubai, the original, the epicenter, probably has spent 20 billion dollars on unrealized dreams. The Palm and World islands that were built sit mostly empty and there are hundreds of abandoned foundations and half built towers.

[ericmacm]

I would say that the ban could probably be safety related in regard to the quality of the structures being built. The construction industry in China is notorious for the use of of subpar materials, lack of oversight, and quality control issues. Chinese concrete is well known to be of inconsistent quality, containing unprocessed sand from sea beds (as opposed to river beds) which corrodes steel at the cost of saving money. Issues aren't evident immediately, but they will surface in a decade or two. A very tall structure compounds these issues significantly, especially in the event of an earthquake. China gets significant earthquakes literally all over the country, so no city is truly safe from this risk.

Many structures built in China have seen a lot of corners being cut. Even tall structures, such as the Ping An Finance Center, have been found to contain concrete with unprocessed sea sand in samples. For a 500m+ tower, this could make it incredibly dangerous in a couple of decades once the salt in the concrete corrodes steel supports. Since it appears to be impossible to enforce proper quality control, keeping structures shorter will generally reduce the risk that natural disasters would have on already dubious build quality.

[misher]

Originally Posted by ericmacm

I would say that the ban could probably be safety related in regard to the quality of the structures being built. The construction industry in China is notorious for the use of of subpar materials, lack of oversight, and quality control issues. Chinese concrete is well known to be of inconsistent quality, containing unprocessed sand from sea beds (as opposed to river beds) which corrodes steel at the cost of saving money. Issues aren't evident immediately, but they will surface in a decade or two. A very tall structure compounds these issues significantly, especially in the event of an earthquake. China gets significant earthquakes literally all over the country, so no city is truly safe from this risk.

Many structures built in China have seen a lot of corners being cut. Even tall structures, such as the Ping An Finance Center, have been found to contain concrete with unprocessed sea sand in samples. For a 500m+ tower, this could make it incredibly dangerous in a couple of decades once the salt in the concrete corrodes steel supports. Since it appears to be impossible to enforce proper quality control, keeping structures shorter will generally reduce the risk that natural disasters would have on already dubious build quality.

Naturally poor quality exists everywhere and it seems like we've only begun taking earthquake safety seriously in the past few decades. Likely most old buildings cannot withstand an earthquake.

Of course in China you have incidents such as this, though when you consider the population of China an incident such as this is actually quite rare.



America also has its own incidents, for instance the tower in New Orleans that collapsed during construction.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2019/10/12...-building-collapse-construction-orig.cnn

Or locally the 1988 Station Square collapse in Burnaby.


Its actually surprising that China doesn't have more incidents given that we have so many here with a much smaller population and stricter quality controls/regulations.

[ericmacm]

I do agree that poor quality is found everywhere. No country is immune to it. There are numerous other examples, such as the geotechnical failure of the Millennium Tower in San Fransisco, the structural issues of Danbrook One in Victoria and the issue with an undisclosed residential tower in Surrey which was accidentally designed with a different building code.

The main reason we don't see much of this out of China at the moment is most likely because of the restrictive nature of the media and the fact that most prominent structures are relatively new. A lot of older structures are demolished before they would reach the point of falling down, and most tall buildings in the country have been built within the past couple of decades and are still relatively young. I wouldn't be surprised if the engineering was fine, especially for some large towers designed by international firms. Some are probably even overengineered to some degree.

The problem is ultimately with the contractors and if they decide to cut corners by sourcing cheap material. Like with any country, certain contractors are better than others, but the way the construction industry operates there (no spec sheets, lack of communication laws between parties, corruption, and loan structuring) encourages the cutting of corners so one can pocket more money. The industry there is still relatively unregulated, the culture of the industry makes it very hard to regulate, and the consequences of this will begin to surface as these new buildings age in the coming decades.

I see this new nationwide ban on tall buildings as a way to start regulation. Any higher-profile buildings over 250m will be under the microscope, and as a result, any quality issues will come to light and will eventually (hopefully) force a new culture of quality in Chinese construction.

[Innsertnamehere]

M3 in Mississauga started excavation today. Total height of 260m. The 475 Yonge North tower now slides back onto the top 50 tallest proposals.

Current cutoff is 190m.


https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/to...gers-real-estate-ibi-group.28994/page-13