No Strong Connection Between # of Cranes and New Units

[Klippenstein]

I saw this posted on twitter and I thought people on this forum would love to discuss it.

Evan Boyce @evboyce
In general, there's basically no pattern between cranes and new housing.

https://twitter.com/evboyce/status/1678573678181728261

[phone]

New units generally, or new multi-units? My armchair hypothesis is that there may be a correlation between proportion of SFH in approved new units and orange minus blue on the chart.

[mhays]

There's waaay more correlation to multifamily than total units.

Further, the RLB tower crane index is only for tower cranes. Even many apartment buildings don't have them. For example a four-story suburban apartment complex set back 60' from the street might use forklifts instead. I think they might not even include ground-controlled cranes, i.e. the smaller version of tower cranes, which are common on smaller infill sites.

The index also appears to omit some crane types used for tall buildings. This might be behind the tiny New York number most notably.

[Doady]

This might be true if they are including low-rise construction, or if they are referring to sandhill cranes and whooping cranes instead of construction cranes.

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by mhays

There's waaay more correlation to multifamily than total units.

Further, the RLB tower crane index is only for tower cranes. Even many apartment buildings don't have them. For example a four-story suburban apartment complex set back 60' from the street might use forklifts instead. I think they might not even include ground-controlled cranes, i.e. the smaller version of tower cranes, which are common on smaller infill sites.

The index also appears to omit some crane types used for tall buildings. This might be behind the tiny New York number most notably.

The RLB crane index has been very well picked apart here and elsewhere for being a very misleading figure

[jmecklenborg]

If a city doesn't have many old offices, warehouses, etc., to renovate into hotels, apartments, etc., then there is going to be more visible construction.

Duh.

[Crawford]

The crane index isn't a thing. There's no data repository for cranes. So I assume at best they're very loosely correlated, since one (building permits) is an actual data point, and the other isn't.

There is no way to compile crane counts besides just looking for them and counting them, and it doesn't make sense, as every city has different crane rules. You can build a 40 floor building with no crane, and you can build a 4 floor building with crane.