10 ms·

I would argue that the elevator is at least as influential if not more. As I look around from my 9th story office, nearly every building I see and the density p

I would argue that the elevator is at least as influential if not more. As I look around from my 9th story office, nearly every building I see and the density provided thereof, would have been impossible without the elevator or something very much like it. (A series of escalators?) How many people want to climb 20 stories of stairs every day of their life, nevermind the transportation of equipment, etc.

dmreedy 8y ago
I heard a little nugget the other day that, at its height in the early Roman period, the city of Antioch had a population density of about 190 people/acre (~500,000 souls, with a diameter of ~4 miles); by comparison, modern day NYC has a population density of around 100 people/acre. Granted, a much higher overall population in the modern city. However, very rarely did buildings in that era reach five stories, and almost none exceeded that height.
- bobthepanda 8y ago
  Part of it is living standards; even the poorest of the poor in New York generally don't live in the cramped, slumlike conditions of the 1900s. Part of it is household size; the modern household has decreased in size dramatically, now that raising children has moved from "we need as many children as possible so that at least a few of them make it to adulthood" to "giving children a quality life is expensive". A good deal of it is transportation. In 1800 most people walked, and the rich used horses. By 1900 we had railroads and streetcars; by 1920 we had metros; by 1950 we had automobiles. The effect of the automobile has been strongest in America; a single highway interchange in Atlanta takes up as much room as the city of Florence, Italy. https://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/you-cant-set-shop-side-expressway.html https://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/you-cant-set-shop-si...
  - derekp7 8y ago
    Ok, something is off with the info in that link. I just looked up Florence Italy on Google maps, and it measures about 5.5 miles across. I couldn't find that exact interchange in the article's picture, so I picked the largest one I saw by eyeballing the map of Atlanta (I85 and I20), and it appears to measure about 2000 feet across.
    - kingaillas 8y ago
      He's using what must be the core downtown area of Florence, Italy. Matching the picture in the post - on google maps, what is bounded by SS67 road on the north side of the Arno river: counterclockwise to Piazza della Liberta and back to the river; and on the south side the road down to Porta Romana and back to the river. That section eyeballs to be around roughly ~1.5 mi across. Larger than 2000 ft but a lot less than 5.5 mi.
    - rootusrootus 8y ago
      Yeah the author seems to be trying to make some point, but even using a very narrow definition of the city of Florence, and a very expansive view of the interchange, he's practically off by an order of magnitude.
      - Dylan16807 8y ago
        The interchange image is 5x too wide, and the Florence image is more than 3x too narrow. That's more than an order of magnitude in length. And more than two orders of magnitude in area.
    - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
      He appears to be defining "Florence" as "the urban core of Florence," and "Atlanta cloverleaf" as "Atlanta cloverleaf plus a Florence-sized chunk of adjacent land."
      - emj 8y ago
        Highways create alot of dead space that can not be used for other things than really low value stuff. So it's a fair comparision, considering we are talking about walking in a city center vs. people polluting the same size of land
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    > Part of it is living standards; even the poorest of the poor in New York generally don't live in the cramped, slumlike conditions of the 1900s. Living standards affect density, but they're not the reason we can't fit 190 people per acre. Let's say you're in 1900 making 6 story apartment blocks. You could set up a residential district that's 30% road, 20% open space, and 50% building. Make your average apartment be 600 square feet with a 20x12 living room, two 10x12 bedrooms, a 10x6 kitchenette, a 10x6 bathroom, and an occupancy of 3. Probably slightly reshaped for the sake of windows. With some extra space for hallways and stairs, you can reach an average ground impact of 75 square feet per person. That means it only takes a third of an acre to house 190 people, leaving the other 2/3 for businesses. For comparison NYC is currently 75% residential. Such an apartment isn't huge but it's still twice the size of college dorm. These days you could build 3x as high and give each person over twice that much space and have lots of elevators and still fit 200 people into a third of an acre. Rent out the bottom floor to shops too.
    - bobthepanda 8y ago
      That's if your area only consists of apartments. What about shops? What about schools and required athletic facilities? What about playgrounds and parks? What of hospitals and clinics, or police stations and jails, or fire stations? And can all these workers get to work using the available infrastructure? Until 1961, New York had a zoning code that was concerned with exactly none of those things, and planning for services and basic infrastructure was haphazard at best. While the current zoning code is overly restrictive, it at least prevents growth in places that would not have the services required to handle it. (It also prevents the growth in a lot of other places as well, but that's beside the point.)
      - Dylan16807 8y ago
        >That's if your area only consists of apartments. What about shops? What about schools and required athletic facilities? [...] What of hospitals and clinics, or police stations and jails, or fire stations? That's why I looked up how much of the city is residential right now. If you only spend 1/3 of the city on apartments, that leaves you a lot of room for everything else. > What about playgrounds and parks? Oops. I had a thing about making an entire block into a park out of every 3x3 but I lost it in editing. So yes there's lots of room for parks. > And can all these workers get to work using the available infrastructure? The base idea was set in 1900 and housing the same number of people but in better buildings, so yeah they can still get to work. For the idea of fitting more people into the current city, I'm not sure, but it would probably work out. Have more mid-rise housing right next to jobs, and use the tax boost from having more residents to add more mass transit. As far as zoning, the issue is not housing vs. services and infrastructure, it's the size of the housing. Detached houses have an awful use ratio.
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > the city of Antioch had a population density of about 190 people/acre (~500,000 souls, with a diameter of ~4 miles); by comparison, modern day NYC has a population density of around 100 people/acre. Manhattan has a density of 72,000 people per square mile. If it were its own city, that would make it the 6th densest city in the world[0]. The top three are Manila and Mumbai, at 108,000, 74,000, and 74,000 people per square mile, respectively. So, regardless of levels of development, modern cities cap out under 80,000 people per square mile, with Manila being a slight outlier (but not by much). 190 people/acre - what you cite for Antioch - is 121,600 people per square mile. I'm not able to find any reputable sources that back that statistic, and estimating populations of cities from antiquity is inherently a bit tricky. 500,000 people would also put it at 50-80% of the population of Rome during the same time period, and more populous that Constantinople, though it's not included in any of the four lists of populations of large cities on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_throughout_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_through... [0] There are two more, at 108K and 80K, but they both have populations under 70,000, so they're not comparable.
- Retric 8y ago
  Mostly that's due to commuters and tourists. Hotels and office buildings take up a lot of space without increasing 'population density'.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
Rotdhizon 8y ago
They were influential, but not critical per say. Many modern buildings, especially business building would be uninhabitable without air-conditioning. In general,food, water, and shelter are necessities for survival. If that had a modern spin, you very well might add air-conditioning onto that list.
- azernik 8y ago
  I'd count that under "shelter"
  - CompuHacker 8y ago
    "Energy management" can replace "Shelter", especially with climate change and space exploration. It is necessary to move heat around to get useful work done. More people will have to become familiar with this idea personally to maintain their way of life.
- bluntfang 8y ago
  I think A/C belongs in the shelter category, no?
jeremy7600 8y ago
>How many people want to climb 20 stories of stairs every day of their life, nevermind the transportation of equipment, etc. Ask all those people in NYC with walkups.
- jackcarter 8y ago
  I was curious about the highest walkups in NYC. Apparently, there are a few seventh-floor ones still around, and the rent for about a 15% discount relative to the third floor. Since 1929, elevators have been mandatory for buildings >6 floors. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903639404576516760467809064 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903639404576516...
  - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    I think I'd go for that, save on the rent and save on the gym membership.
- emodendroket 8y ago
  Which constitutes a very small portion of the population. And considering many people in NYC live in apartments with pests, no windows, or whatever else, I'm not sure "want to" is necessarily the right choice to describe everything they end up doing.
libraryatnight 8y ago
Indeed! The Economist not long ago printed this wonderful piece on elevators: https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2017/12/19/new-lift-technology-is-reshaping-cities https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2017/12/19/new-...
opencl 8y ago
Ancient Rome was full of 5-7 story apartment buildings and had a population of around a million. Higher density than a whole lot of modern cities, the vast majority of which are not seas of skyscrapers.
- raverbashing 8y ago
  7 seems like a stretch, "modern" liftless buildings (think 18/19th century European buildings) are usually around 3/4 floors, some go to 5 but it's not the majority
- philipodonnell 8y ago
  Suprised me to learn that the top floors were the cheapest because the buildings were made of wood with no organized fire service and burned down all the time, so being upstairs was a death sentence.
  - iguy 8y ago
    Indeed. But not only fire risk -- stairs are a pain. I believe that the upper floors of all the pretty buildings in Paris were cheaper before elevators, too. (Perhaps the streets were quieter then too.)
    - JackFr 8y ago
      Top floors in 5 story walkups are definitely cheaper in NYC this minute. Apart from the stairs being a pain, your water pressure is also weak.
      - TomMarius 8y ago
        Is it? I lived in the 13th floor of a communism-era building my whole childhood and it was completely OK. Are US standards different than European?
        TheCoelacanth 8y ago
iguy 8y ago
Depends on what time-period you take as "modern". NYC circa 1920 had lots of tall buildings but no AC at all (I think, from memory). But absolutely was not possible without elevators. (And steel frames for buildings, too.) But the article seems to take modern to mean present-day Houston, and Dubai, Singapore... these were not devoid of human settlement before, of course, but could not look as they do now without AC.
- Aloha 8y ago
  Arguably, those cities are quite livable without AC - but not working a 9-5 schedule - as its almost impossible to do productive work during the hottest part of the day. Hence in hot weather climates, the siesta.
- JackFr 8y ago
  Back when buildings had windows that opened, paperweights more more than decorative.
avar 8y ago
Sure, let's imagine a world without elevators. > How many people want to climb 20 stories > of stairs every day of their life. I'd guess a lot. How long does it take you to climb 20 stories if you're having to do it every single day of your life so you're used to it? Let's say a generous 10 seconds per floor, so that's around 3 and a half minutes. Just waiting for and taking the elevator will easily take a minute at least. So we're left with just over 2 minutes. This is on the order of time that it takes many people to walk from their parked car to the front door at work, or even just to park their car! That would be nothing compared to the alternative of there being 1-3 floor houses everywhere, so you'd need to commute even further than that. > nevermind the transportation of equipment. Almost all of the tall houses in Amsterdam built in pre-elevator times have a hook on the top floor that can be used to hoist cargo up. Some similar arrangement could be worked out for modern houses if they didn't have elevators.
- Sharlin 8y ago
  > How long does it take you to climb 20 stories if you're having to do it every single day of your life so you're used to it? Let's say a generous 10 seconds per floor, so that's around 3 and a half minutes. People would certainly be more fit in such a world. In ours, climbing 20 stories is not something many people can do at all, never mind do willingly every day. But even for a fit person, 20 stories at 10sec/story is definitely not "generous", more like a great athletic achievement given how strenuous it is to climb stairs compared to walking or running on flat ground. Gravity is a bitch.
  - WalterBright 8y ago
    I'd try to run up the 8 floors. Never made it past 6 without having to stop before my heart exploded.
  - mirimir 8y ago
    Well, I'm an old man, in not such great shape. And I can go up five floors in less than a minute. If I'm tired, I just walk up, two steps per stride, with help using the hand rail. That's actually easier for me than going up one step per stride. And going down is harder on my knees.
WalterBright 8y ago
Combine that with the advent of cheap structural steel.
hammock 8y ago
>How many people want to climb 20 stories of stairs In SimTower you can only build to four stories with stairs and escalators, I believe.
brenschluss 8y ago
Reyner Banham's The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment [1] argues that it's three factors: - Elevator (making high-rises socially possible) - Air conditioning - Electric lighting (making windows less necessary to fill interior space with workplaces, and much safer than ceiling gas lights) [1] https://www.amazon.com/Architecture-Well-Tempered-Environment-Reyner-Banham/dp/0226036987 https://www.amazon.com/Architecture-Well-Tempered-Environmen...
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Water and sewage both sustaining that height don't hurt either.
  - brenschluss 8y ago
    Yes, but that technology existed before the 1900s. Banham has a great graph that illustrates the sudden mass adoption of lightbulbs/refrigerators/air conditioning within the span of 10-20 years from 1910-1930.
    - dredmorbius 8y ago
      Water-at-height is a bit of a different creature. Steel suitable for pipes, and long-distance water pipes, really did not exist before the 1860s, and mostly arose for and from the Pennsylvania oil industry. The earlier options were generally ceramic pipe (OK for horizontal flows, but prone to breakage), and open acqueducts (dating to Roman times), with wood or bamboo used for some shorter runs (tens to 100s of meters generally). I don't know much about skyscraper plumbing at all, though I doubt it's just scaled-up 1-4 storey kit. And by 1931, the Empire State Building was 102 storeys tall (443m). For more on multi-storey plumbing considerations: http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/hygiene/plumbing14.pdf http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/hygiene/plumbing1...
DanielGee 8y ago
Or water pumps. Imagine no water to drink or flush the toilet above the 10th floor.

dmreedy 8y ago

I heard a little nugget the other day that, at its height in the early Roman period, the city of Antioch had a population density of about 190 people/acre (~500,000 souls, with a diameter of ~4 miles); by comparison, modern day NYC has a population density of around 100 people/acre. Granted, a much higher overall population in the modern city. However, very rarely did buildings in that era reach five stories, and almost none exceeded that height.

bobthepanda 8y ago
Part of it is living standards; even the poorest of the poor in New York generally don't live in the cramped, slumlike conditions of the 1900s. Part of it is household size; the modern household has decreased in size dramatically, now that raising children has moved from "we need as many children as possible so that at least a few of them make it to adulthood" to "giving children a quality life is expensive". A good deal of it is transportation. In 1800 most people walked, and the rich used horses. By 1900 we had railroads and streetcars; by 1920 we had metros; by 1950 we had automobiles. The effect of the automobile has been strongest in America; a single highway interchange in Atlanta takes up as much room as the city of Florence, Italy. https://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/you-cant-set-shop-side-expressway.html https://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/you-cant-set-shop-si...
- derekp7 8y ago
  Ok, something is off with the info in that link. I just looked up Florence Italy on Google maps, and it measures about 5.5 miles across. I couldn't find that exact interchange in the article's picture, so I picked the largest one I saw by eyeballing the map of Atlanta (I85 and I20), and it appears to measure about 2000 feet across.
  - kingaillas 8y ago
    He's using what must be the core downtown area of Florence, Italy. Matching the picture in the post - on google maps, what is bounded by SS67 road on the north side of the Arno river: counterclockwise to Piazza della Liberta and back to the river; and on the south side the road down to Porta Romana and back to the river. That section eyeballs to be around roughly ~1.5 mi across. Larger than 2000 ft but a lot less than 5.5 mi.
  - rootusrootus 8y ago
    Yeah the author seems to be trying to make some point, but even using a very narrow definition of the city of Florence, and a very expansive view of the interchange, he's practically off by an order of magnitude.
    - Dylan16807 8y ago
      The interchange image is 5x too wide, and the Florence image is more than 3x too narrow. That's more than an order of magnitude in length. And more than two orders of magnitude in area.
  - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
    He appears to be defining "Florence" as "the urban core of Florence," and "Atlanta cloverleaf" as "Atlanta cloverleaf plus a Florence-sized chunk of adjacent land."
    - emj 8y ago
      Highways create alot of dead space that can not be used for other things than really low value stuff. So it's a fair comparision, considering we are talking about walking in a city center vs. people polluting the same size of land
- Dylan16807 8y ago
  > Part of it is living standards; even the poorest of the poor in New York generally don't live in the cramped, slumlike conditions of the 1900s. Living standards affect density, but they're not the reason we can't fit 190 people per acre. Let's say you're in 1900 making 6 story apartment blocks. You could set up a residential district that's 30% road, 20% open space, and 50% building. Make your average apartment be 600 square feet with a 20x12 living room, two 10x12 bedrooms, a 10x6 kitchenette, a 10x6 bathroom, and an occupancy of 3. Probably slightly reshaped for the sake of windows. With some extra space for hallways and stairs, you can reach an average ground impact of 75 square feet per person. That means it only takes a third of an acre to house 190 people, leaving the other 2/3 for businesses. For comparison NYC is currently 75% residential. Such an apartment isn't huge but it's still twice the size of college dorm. These days you could build 3x as high and give each person over twice that much space and have lots of elevators and still fit 200 people into a third of an acre. Rent out the bottom floor to shops too.
  - bobthepanda 8y ago
    That's if your area only consists of apartments. What about shops? What about schools and required athletic facilities? What about playgrounds and parks? What of hospitals and clinics, or police stations and jails, or fire stations? And can all these workers get to work using the available infrastructure? Until 1961, New York had a zoning code that was concerned with exactly none of those things, and planning for services and basic infrastructure was haphazard at best. While the current zoning code is overly restrictive, it at least prevents growth in places that would not have the services required to handle it. (It also prevents the growth in a lot of other places as well, but that's beside the point.)
    - Dylan16807 8y ago
      >That's if your area only consists of apartments. What about shops? What about schools and required athletic facilities? [...] What of hospitals and clinics, or police stations and jails, or fire stations? That's why I looked up how much of the city is residential right now. If you only spend 1/3 of the city on apartments, that leaves you a lot of room for everything else. > What about playgrounds and parks? Oops. I had a thing about making an entire block into a park out of every 3x3 but I lost it in editing. So yes there's lots of room for parks. > And can all these workers get to work using the available infrastructure? The base idea was set in 1900 and housing the same number of people but in better buildings, so yeah they can still get to work. For the idea of fitting more people into the current city, I'm not sure, but it would probably work out. Have more mid-rise housing right next to jobs, and use the tax boost from having more residents to add more mass transit. As far as zoning, the issue is not housing vs. services and infrastructure, it's the size of the housing. Detached houses have an awful use ratio.
chimeracoder 8y ago
> the city of Antioch had a population density of about 190 people/acre (~500,000 souls, with a diameter of ~4 miles); by comparison, modern day NYC has a population density of around 100 people/acre. Manhattan has a density of 72,000 people per square mile. If it were its own city, that would make it the 6th densest city in the world[0]. The top three are Manila and Mumbai, at 108,000, 74,000, and 74,000 people per square mile, respectively. So, regardless of levels of development, modern cities cap out under 80,000 people per square mile, with Manila being a slight outlier (but not by much). 190 people/acre - what you cite for Antioch - is 121,600 people per square mile. I'm not able to find any reputable sources that back that statistic, and estimating populations of cities from antiquity is inherently a bit tricky. 500,000 people would also put it at 50-80% of the population of Rome during the same time period, and more populous that Constantinople, though it's not included in any of the four lists of populations of large cities on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_throughout_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_through... [0] There are two more, at 108K and 80K, but they both have populations under 70,000, so they're not comparable.
Retric 8y ago
Mostly that's due to commuters and tourists. Hotels and office buildings take up a lot of space without increasing 'population density'.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

Rotdhizon 8y ago

They were influential, but not critical per say. Many modern buildings, especially business building would be uninhabitable without air-conditioning. In general,food, water, and shelter are necessities for survival. If that had a modern spin, you very well might add air-conditioning onto that list.

azernik 8y ago
I'd count that under "shelter"
- CompuHacker 8y ago
  "Energy management" can replace "Shelter", especially with climate change and space exploration. It is necessary to move heat around to get useful work done. More people will have to become familiar with this idea personally to maintain their way of life.
bluntfang 8y ago
I think A/C belongs in the shelter category, no?

jeremy7600 8y ago

>How many people want to climb 20 stories of stairs every day of their life, nevermind the transportation of equipment, etc. Ask all those people in NYC with walkups.

jackcarter 8y ago
I was curious about the highest walkups in NYC. Apparently, there are a few seventh-floor ones still around, and the rent for about a 15% discount relative to the third floor. Since 1929, elevators have been mandatory for buildings >6 floors. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903639404576516760467809064 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903639404576516...
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  I think I'd go for that, save on the rent and save on the gym membership.
emodendroket 8y ago
Which constitutes a very small portion of the population. And considering many people in NYC live in apartments with pests, no windows, or whatever else, I'm not sure "want to" is necessarily the right choice to describe everything they end up doing.

libraryatnight 8y ago

Indeed! The Economist not long ago printed this wonderful piece on elevators: https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2017/12/19/new-lift-technology-is-reshaping-cities https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2017/12/19/new-...

opencl 8y ago

Ancient Rome was full of 5-7 story apartment buildings and had a population of around a million. Higher density than a whole lot of modern cities, the vast majority of which are not seas of skyscrapers.

raverbashing 8y ago
7 seems like a stretch, "modern" liftless buildings (think 18/19th century European buildings) are usually around 3/4 floors, some go to 5 but it's not the majority
philipodonnell 8y ago
Suprised me to learn that the top floors were the cheapest because the buildings were made of wood with no organized fire service and burned down all the time, so being upstairs was a death sentence.
- iguy 8y ago
  Indeed. But not only fire risk -- stairs are a pain. I believe that the upper floors of all the pretty buildings in Paris were cheaper before elevators, too. (Perhaps the streets were quieter then too.)
  - JackFr 8y ago
    Top floors in 5 story walkups are definitely cheaper in NYC this minute. Apart from the stairs being a pain, your water pressure is also weak.
    - TomMarius 8y ago
      Is it? I lived in the 13th floor of a communism-era building my whole childhood and it was completely OK. Are US standards different than European?
      - TheCoelacanth 8y ago

iguy 8y ago

Depends on what time-period you take as "modern". NYC circa 1920 had lots of tall buildings but no AC at all (I think, from memory). But absolutely was not possible without elevators. (And steel frames for buildings, too.) But the article seems to take modern to mean present-day Houston, and Dubai, Singapore... these were not devoid of human settlement before, of course, but could not look as they do now without AC.

Aloha 8y ago
Arguably, those cities are quite livable without AC - but not working a 9-5 schedule - as its almost impossible to do productive work during the hottest part of the day. Hence in hot weather climates, the siesta.
JackFr 8y ago
Back when buildings had windows that opened, paperweights more more than decorative.

avar 8y ago

Sure, let's imagine a world without elevators. > How many people want to climb 20 stories > of stairs every day of their life. I'd guess a lot. How long does it take you to climb 20 stories if you're having to do it every single day of your life so you're used to it? Let's say a generous 10 seconds per floor, so that's around 3 and a half minutes. Just waiting for and taking the elevator will easily take a minute at least. So we're left with just over 2 minutes. This is on the order of time that it takes many people to walk from their parked car to the front door at work, or even just to park their car! That would be nothing compared to the alternative of there being 1-3 floor houses everywhere, so you'd need to commute even further than that. > nevermind the transportation of equipment. Almost all of the tall houses in Amsterdam built in pre-elevator times have a hook on the top floor that can be used to hoist cargo up. Some similar arrangement could be worked out for modern houses if they didn't have elevators.

Sharlin 8y ago
> How long does it take you to climb 20 stories if you're having to do it every single day of your life so you're used to it? Let's say a generous 10 seconds per floor, so that's around 3 and a half minutes. People would certainly be more fit in such a world. In ours, climbing 20 stories is not something many people can do at all, never mind do willingly every day. But even for a fit person, 20 stories at 10sec/story is definitely not "generous", more like a great athletic achievement given how strenuous it is to climb stairs compared to walking or running on flat ground. Gravity is a bitch.
- WalterBright 8y ago
  I'd try to run up the 8 floors. Never made it past 6 without having to stop before my heart exploded.
- mirimir 8y ago
  Well, I'm an old man, in not such great shape. And I can go up five floors in less than a minute. If I'm tired, I just walk up, two steps per stride, with help using the hand rail. That's actually easier for me than going up one step per stride. And going down is harder on my knees.

WalterBright 8y ago

Combine that with the advent of cheap structural steel.

hammock 8y ago

>How many people want to climb 20 stories of stairs In SimTower you can only build to four stories with stairs and escalators, I believe.

brenschluss 8y ago

Reyner Banham's The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment [1] argues that it's three factors: - Elevator (making high-rises socially possible) - Air conditioning - Electric lighting (making windows less necessary to fill interior space with workplaces, and much safer than ceiling gas lights) [1] https://www.amazon.com/Architecture-Well-Tempered-Environment-Reyner-Banham/dp/0226036987 https://www.amazon.com/Architecture-Well-Tempered-Environmen...

dredmorbius 8y ago
Water and sewage both sustaining that height don't hurt either.
- brenschluss 8y ago
  Yes, but that technology existed before the 1900s. Banham has a great graph that illustrates the sudden mass adoption of lightbulbs/refrigerators/air conditioning within the span of 10-20 years from 1910-1930.
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    Water-at-height is a bit of a different creature. Steel suitable for pipes, and long-distance water pipes, really did not exist before the 1860s, and mostly arose for and from the Pennsylvania oil industry. The earlier options were generally ceramic pipe (OK for horizontal flows, but prone to breakage), and open acqueducts (dating to Roman times), with wood or bamboo used for some shorter runs (tens to 100s of meters generally). I don't know much about skyscraper plumbing at all, though I doubt it's just scaled-up 1-4 storey kit. And by 1931, the Empire State Building was 102 storeys tall (443m). For more on multi-storey plumbing considerations: http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/hygiene/plumbing14.pdf http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/hygiene/plumbing1...

DanielGee 8y ago

Or water pumps. Imagine no water to drink or flush the toilet above the 10th floor.