Hong Kong did this (public transport stations located in the sub-basements of selected buildings) really well. Note however that skyscrapers also have scalabil

Hong Kong did this (public transport stations located in the sub-basements of selected buildings) really well. Note however that skyscrapers also have scalability limits: as height increases, the amount of interior that gets eaten up by non-usable infrastructure and support (e.g. beams, load-bearing wall, elevators). I have read on the internet (please correct me if my data is wrong -- I've not fact checked it) that the Burj Khalifa in Dubai occupies about 68796.6 m2, while offering about 334000 m2 of interior floor space. Thats about 4.85X increase. This means that if they simply occupied all the land and went up for 5 floors they'd have more floor space. As an example of a low-rise building, the Pentagon in the U.S., with 5 floors and 600000 m2 has more usable square footage than the Burj, the tallest building in the world. (Alas I don't know how much land the Pentagon uses, maybe somebody can tell me?) I also don't know if the Burj Dubai is representative w.r.t skyscraper economics. It's unlikely that Burj Dubai's main raison d'être has been rental income, it's more a landmark, drawing attention to Dubai, to the ruler's power, promote Dubai as a business location etc. (Those will indirectly affect achievable rental income in other, more functional Dubai buildings.) See [1] for a well-written introduction to the economics of skyscrapers. [1] http://buildingtheskyline.org/skyscraper-height-i/ http://buildingtheskyline.org/skyscraper-height-i/