The Loophole Behind NYC's Skinny Skyscrapers - Cheddar Explains
Vložit
- čas přidán 15. 11. 2021
- New York has always been home to some of the world’s tallest towers, but in the last 10 years the city has seen an influx of super skinny buildings towering over Central Park, built exclusively for the ultra-rich. With demand for luxury high-rise vistas being higher than ever, building developers are using every zoning opportunity they can to push height limits - and there’s one loophole that’s helping make that happen.
Further reading:
The Guardian
www.theguardian.com/cities/20...
New York Times
www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/ny...
PBS
www.pbs.org/video/skinny-skys...
Building The Skyline
buildingtheskyline.org/tag/19...
AIA NY
www.aiany.org/news/the-mechan...
NYPAP
www.nypap.org/preservation-hi...
CTBUH
global.ctbuh.org/resources/pa...
Municipal Arts Society
www.mas.org/initiatives/accid...
Subscribe to Cheddar on CZcams: chdr.tv/subscribe
Connect with Cheddar!
On Facebook: chdr.tv/facebook
On Twitter: chdr.tv/twitter
On Instagram: chdr.tv/instagram
On Cheddar.com: chdr.tv/cheddar - Věda a technologie
SO... do you love them or hate them?
love em
Hate em..No new skyscrapers.
omg u highlighted my comment
They're very ugly... coming from europe to NY and seeing all that concrete and no parks whatsoever, except for central park, is really weird to me. Sort of claustrophobic and ugly
Hate them
Forget the stairs as a fire escape, just give the inhabitants parachutes.
teach them to rappel. Give them long ropes and they can make their own way down.
It might be amusing to watch a 90 year old billionaire sliding down on ropes
jet packs
Nah just install runways every 10 floors and let them all have private electric vtol planes that musk said should be here by now...
FIRE!!! do you understand how fire works ??
@@oskarwinters1873 by burning?
The local nickname for these buildings is "The Middle Fingers". They're mostly useless, serving as investment properties or outright money laundering for the super rich. On the other hand, the people fighting against them are mostly lying about being worried about shadows on the park and other nonsense. They have condos in other tall buildings and don't want their views blocked by new construction. People aren't hiring incredibly expensive lawyers and PR consultants to keep Central Park sunny. They're trying to prevent a blocked view from lowering the value of their own multi-million-dollar investment property.
They're greedier than Patrick Bateman lol
I, too am skeptical of altruistic arguments such as these.
Exactly.
I've been using youtube since I was a kid back in 2006, in middle school. I'm on my master's degree now and I've yet to see a comment with more integrity and value than yours.
If this comment was a dart you killed 3 flies and hit it in the bullseye.
I found another place other than wallstreet where people would smash in somebody's ribcage for a dime, And its also in Manhattan. Is The city in complete terms ok?
"Our ability to build things has outstripped our ability to fully understand the consequences" That has always been true. Even when we think we know we don't.
The ignorant are ignorant of their ignorance, the truly knowledgeable only really know just how much they don't know.
The potential consequences here are laid bare, the will to go forward in these case is equally motivated by greed as much as the desire to out-do ourselves which if you ask me is a dangerous mix.
The consequences have always been good. You're lying to yourself if think otherwise.
@@yarharyar That's cowardly and foolish.
@Custos Vitiosus Sounds like what the jab committee should have done.
An apartment building for the ultra rich was inspired by a trash can. If that doesn’t say something I don’t know what does.
If it walks like a duck, sounds like a duck...
I'm sorry, what does it say? About what?
Some say simplicity is the hallmark of luxury.
My trash can is nicer looking than these buildings.
@@twentyninepines4560 I think it says that the design of the buildings is largely uinspiring and lacks a fair degree of aesthetics which can be viewed as "trash" boring outward design and that the ideas inspiring these building are trash as well in that it's all for a superficial, perceived value for a very select few who have garbage scow sized egos and wallets the size of Everest.
The idea of selling airspace above your building is fascinating and ludicrous at the same time. lololol
More the idea of needing to is brain bending.
It’s probably naïve, but it sounds like it’s time for a from-scratch rethink of these and possibly all zoning laws
It's been the case some cities like NYC for decades. Nothing new.
Obviously someone should step in and say: You can't do that!
But money...
It was an idea made to help building owners profit off of their extremely valuable real estate in places where zoning laws or historic preservation prohibited them from demolition.
I have some air for sale in Montana. Dm for info
"In dwelling, live close to the ground." --Lao Tzu
This was certianly the case in Ancient Rome. They had tall apartment blocks called _insulae) and although the bottom floor or two was concrete, the upper floors were wooden and thus a greater danger in a fire, so the bottom floors were prime real estate for those on a budget and the upper floors were for the poorest people.
@@michaelheliotis5279 Very true. Higher floors have typically been for poor people - before elevators. Think if you lived on the 10th floor of a building without elevators. Rich people wouldn't do that despite having a better view.
@@michaelheliotis5279 and something interesting I saw is whenever I see examples of the domus, they're mostly just single story sprawling houses, even those that are supposed to be in urban areas that would have other houses built right next to them.
Lao Tzu never developed real estate in NYC
well NY is not exactly an earth quake zone
A city's water system can only provide water up to about 100 feet at most. To provide water to higher heights you have to have a floor with water storage tanks that positive displacement pumps can pump water to. But the taller the column of water is the greater the pressure it creates and can easily over pressure faucets. So to provide water to all floors of a building without blowing out the plumbing you have to have a floor at least every 100 feet dedicated to storing water that water can be pumped to to provide water for the entire building at safe pressures.
And as long as you are doing that, that floor or floors can be used for the other systems like electricity , gas, communications, etcetera. If nothing else, a failure in one section of the building might no affect the entire building.
You don't need storage arranged to provide an acceptable water pressure to each floor! You need a pressure regulator at each floor to drop the high pressure trunk to the desired water pressure.
With tanks alone, you have the issue that the occupied floor directly under the tank will have very poor pressure.
The desire to have tanks at different levels is to allow staged pumping, which means pumps having less head pressure and therefore are lighter and cheaper. It also saves power to not pump higher than you need. But the choice of how much vertical space to put between storage tanks should be governed by these economies, not the delivery pressure.
No! You really have no idea what you are talking about! NYC exists because of its water system. Back in the 1800's they bought water rights from the Catskill and Poccono Mtns,; the water drops over 2000 ft and so can brought up to 2000ft. Water pressure s reduced in NYC, not raised, but they have a special supply for tall bldgs.
@@kenlieberman4215
Then why does New York City have thousands of buildings with water towers on them? The reason of course is that the aqueducts and most of the rest of the system are not a closed water tight plumbing so there would be and never has been the ability to have enough pressure to let pressure generated by gravity raise the water to anywhere close to 2,000 feet. At best they can get water up to six stories high and then they have to use pumps. But even with six stories of pressure anything over two would have very little pressure so they need to use water towers or some sort of pump and pressure tank combination to get good water pressure.
www.localike-newyork.com/blog/water-towers-in-new-york-city/
www.6sqft.com/nyc-water-towers-history-use-and-infrastructure/
czcams.com/video/3a9y-Vv1E78/video.html
Or, you could just a series of Archimedes Screws from one floor to the next and provide water using a trough system. They could possibly even include a distillation column within the building’s spine to allow delivery of the H2O to top floors via thermodynamics. Anything is possible in NYC with units costing $50 million.
We had seen the terrible consequence during the recent black out. Some residents had to resort to pooping in the bags and tossing them out.
I have just one concern: how do firemen rescue people at that height in case of fire? How do people survive in case of a horrible fire? Can you even rescue people from buildings using a helicopter in emergency situations? How far the damage from one of those towers falling down from a fire would spread?
Even if I was the richest woman on Earth I would not want to live there '-' I'm not scared of heights but I want to keep my chances of staying alive as high as I can. So living close to those towers is also a no go for me.
All of the buildings in nyc are fireproof construction - short of a massive catastrophe a typical household fire shouldn’t spread or structurally damage a building
They call spiderman 😂😂
Who cares? Let the Billionaires figure it out themselves. You want to live in a death trap, die.
I seriously doubt people who can afford to live there actually live there.
These properties are held for the future sale value.
@@khaderach19 to other people who wont live there. They are basically banks. Places to store money. Just look at them at night. Not many lights on…
Cheddar's coverage of city issues, particularly New York City, is some of my favorite stuff currently on CZcams.
Same, except I live in Canada.
Check out "Not just bikes" and "Oh the urbanity" if you're interested in more city planning stuff.
We do actually fully understand the consequences of occupying a space so high in NYC. It's not survivable space and if anyone thinks the fire department will get to them in time, they are delusional.
We live in hope.
I don't understand how people can see what happened to the twin towers during 9/11 and still want to live that high up
@@allykat100 To be honest a plane slamming into a building in excess of 500+ mph is rather rare.
Even more rare is a building managing to stay up for nearly an hour despite that.
@@nutellafoxvideos7350 I think you misunderstood my point. If disaster happens at such a high floor level, the emergency services struggle to get to you, so your only way of getting down is using the stairs or jumping, I doubt most people gave the fitness to run down that many stairs amongst smoke and panic. I'm not sure if your familiar with grenfell fire disaster in the UK, but most of the people who dies lived above the 5th floor
They don't worry about it, because the chances of anything happening is extremely small.
Citizens of new york: "we need affordable housing"
Developer: "I have a plan for an affordable housing project."
City council: "eww! No! See the zoning laws."
Luxury developer: "I have a plan for a sky rape containing $17,000,000 condos!"
City council: "yes!! And we'll make an exception for you."
🤦🏾♀️🤦🏾♀️🤦🏾♀️🤦🏾♀️
Yep. It's almost like we need more control on the regulation (so that regulations is more adaptive). I have no idea how, though.
@@alan5506 the answer is deregulation. Bureaucracy is the cancer of society. You don't create regulation to regulate regulation, you just create more bureaucracy.
@@paulzaim7900 Do you understand the meaning of the words you are using?
Yes, we need regulation for regulation.
First of all, do you agree that we need rules? I am not going to argue with an anarchist.
When you say "deregulation", naturally, that means that you remove/change some of the rules that were enacted.
How do you do that? At random?
No. Of course, not. So naturally, we need *rules that govern the process of pruning old rules* (that means regulation...).
And we need to improve that process. Afaik, currently, that process only consist of the government revising old rules at a whim when they feel like it. And that is not good enough.
The luxury developers, the city councilors, and the ‘ultra rich’ that will own them, all donate to the same political party, espouse the same virtues, and vote the same. It’s the same party that rules all of NYC, and the same as those who really care about issues like ‘affordable housing’(!) As a consequence, NOTHING will ever (meaningfully) get done about it. It’s a de facto one-party system at its finest. The rich have captured the left and made the working class left more worried about conservative hillbilly boogeymen than about the rich!
@@BuddyLee23 Yep, "Donation" is always the main reason for those political parties.
I think that the ultrawealthy are going to continue to love (and pay ludicrous amounts of money for) these kinds of buildings until something really terrible happens with one of them. Once a problem affects them, they'll go out of vogue, collapse in value, and possibly even be torn down. Or maybe I'll be completely wrong and they'll become more and more popular as time goes on.
What really terrible event are you thinking of?
Torn down? I imagine that would be rather dusty, even if "doable".
Funny how soon so many forget about 9/11.
@@Ndlanding It is doable, and quite manageable. czcams.com/video/b-H7E-KQgHQ/video.html
They will buy them, and few will live in them every day. If they did occupy it all at once, the elevators would get too busy during peak hours. And the amount of floorspace is not all that great, a suburban family home has more floorspace. If too many residents chose to live in there all at once, then it might be a bit too inconvenient for the average billionaire, and those apartments would only get used when they are in town and couldn't be bothered driving all the way to the heliport to go to their homes in the Hamptons or wherever
When those developers have so much money they can hire an army of lawyers to find the most obscure loophole to grant them a permit.
And/or and exemption.
There is nothing obscure about set backs and air rights. These are not loopholes. They are very deliberate regulations that have been in place for 90+ years. It is irresponsible by Cheddar, you or anyone else to suggest otherwise.
@@AnthonyClauser sorry for your loss
They don't just find the loopholes, but also push for exceptions to be made.
@@AnthonyClauser you must work for Vornado or some real estate developers in the city. Nice try.
Edited: these so called "loopholes" are created by lawmakers who get campaign donations from large corporations and wealthy donors.
As a New Yorker, seeing how quickly these types of structures go up, I don't associate them with luxury living at all. To me, they seem cheaply built, with no character or distinguishing features beyond their height. The impression I get is, quick construction means haphazard - just glass means easy to cheaply produce with local zoning law nuances. They are just uninspired in a city with so many beautiful and interesting buildings around, these towers look even less profound for their lack of anything but a big price tag on a finished development.
finally someone who i can relate with. At this point creating a building that is very tall doesn't impress me anymore. What does impress me is the artistic details and the carving that a building has.
To me it's functionality I wouldn't live in a building above the 1st floor. I want the ability to go outside.
How about the proposed Khaleesi skyscraper in New York?
I’m surprised that they didn’t add segments that require new buildings to use a floor dedicated to the consequences of making super tall buildings. Things such as a fire department that is regularly spaced for general safety hazards like cardiac arrest, kitchen fires, and many other things that your standard fire department has the capacity to do. Maybe a general clinic floor for general purpose treatment. These are just some of the ideas that people can consider when having buildings that outstripped consequence capacity.
The chinese are actually experimenting with a similar concept of having sky scrapers that the people have no need to ever leave. They have all the shops, housing, offices, and infrastructure all rolled into one building package.
@@ColinTherac117 Yeah the Chinese and Japanese designs are really intriguing conceptually for what they are envisioning inside towers. I'm sure as they do grow larger in general (even if not in height), it'll happen eventually with an integrated city. Kind of like the Ren Cen in Detroit but on steroids.
Good idea!
"require"
@@cj09beira while I don’t disagree with you on the high cost of living (I also live in an expensive area of the country), having some places accommodate for work would improve local networks.
Sure, affordable housing needs to be an option, but zoning laws would need to change for that to happen. The vast majority of housing in the US is after all zoned for single family. Even in New York, there’s many in Long Island that live in areas specifically designed for single family use.
One big flaw I see with doing things by floor area, is that the silhouette is probably more important for the lighting and views for the rest of the city, and since these towers are so thin, they have a much larger vertical cross-section for the same volume. Make them twice as wide and deep, and you get 4x the volume for 2x the cross-section.
Another somewhat related issue, is that you still need at least one elevator shaft all the way to the top, and a thin tower means more of the total volume is dedicated to the elevator. Super tall buildings with a single use type are always going to have issues with transportation, though, as long as everyone has to go down to the ground floor to go to other buildings. You either need some horizontal connections above ground, or occasional commercial floors spread through residential buildings, so people don't have to go all the way down *every* time, at least.
Imagine if someone took a shit in the elevator just for fun
It would end up being like waiting for a bus during peak hour, that is, if all those who owned these condos actually lived in them.
But with billionaires, they would only be using them as a New York crashpad. Few would have it as their primary residence.
With only one residence per floor, you won't have as much traffic in the elevator as an office building with hundreds of people on a floor at any one time.
The elevators are really fast. Your ears pop when you ride in them.
You don't need an elevator going from top to bottom, though most likely have one in residential buildings. Office buildings often have fast and slow elevators that serve into hubs, where those going higher change, like riding 2 subway lines to your destination. That way you can have shorter elevators, than the building height.
I like tall buildings. The city needs to do more to make housing affordable though, since it's currently doing nothing.
Need to go even harder with affordable housing requirements. The current requirements aren’t nearly enough
True
Disallow people owning property that no one lives in. Empty apartments don't solve the housing crisis
Make a land tax and get rid of property taxes . Get rid of strict zoning regulations and rent freezes . This will make building new apartment easier and increase housing.. or we can renovate existing housing to at least 5 stories. Lastly we can relocate people to other places in the state to alleviate urban overcrowding.
I hate supertall buildings they make manhattan look unpleasant. Especially those 3 ugly skinny toothpicks. Same with this tall slender skyscraper in Brooklyn which is too tall. I like skyscrapers but not so tall like those one's being built today.
8:01 😒 I guess they forgot about the fire on 9/11/2001 and the aftermath.
Probably no one living there on the regular...just another tax write off!
Well I think two 747s would take down a building no matter how large.
They know the real story of 911, I bet.
Trapping billionaires inside untested, ludicrously skinny towers sounds like a great idea.
Friends of the lawyers but also their biggest enemy.
Agreed, except they're investment properties & the billionaires are probably hardly ever actually in them.
Yeah... until you think up the next fuel cell or face book type idea and become one. Stop being an idiot, a lot of people are self made, and if they inherited, you can't fault them anymore then someone who was born into anything else. Also, many of them give away millions and even billions. Stop crying about people who have more than you.
@@Cruor34 lol
😂🤣🤣😂🤣👍😎.
New York’s skyline is something else no matter how many times I see it it always takes my breath away!
Not anymore before 9/11 yes but after 9/11 the skyline is just a pile of dump especially nowadays with these skinny ugly glass buildings
I can just see the day that a tragedy happens in a super tall, people get stuck, rich people, they die. Then their families come after the city for allowing these safety regulations to be bypassed.
That’s how the rich stay rich, lawsuits 😂
Exactly
Wait, you said a tragedy. Rich people dying in stupid but predictable ways is no tragedy.
@@donsolo7860 _Perfectly balanced with _*_no_*_ exploits_
If you're wondering, it's a line from The Spiffing Brit.
Also, I'm being sarcastic.
@@WildkatPhoto You can make that argument about anyone and anything, and it would still be a tragedy. What's with this weird fetish for dehumanization you've got?
bruuh they started selling invisible air blocks XD
This guy gives me BBC/Channel 4 documentary vibes, feels professional and fresh
the open levels on 432 park avenue are primarily for reducing wind loads. They also function as "mechanical space" with tuned mass dampers, but it's not a legal loophole, because the total added height is only a negligible 6 floors
I don’t know why but the designers of 432 Park Ave copied the Original twin towers design
@@markgriffin2087 Look at the small details. the only thing that was copied was the rectangular shape and concrete facade
@samantha ssmith Symbolism aside, the original WTC buildings were nothing to look at. But, at least they had much more nuance and character than an elongated Rubik's Cube.
More of the ultra rich eating up space while the everyday worker struggles to find a closet for 1500 a month...
That gives me a great idea (free, take it) for an app that tracks unoccupied billionaire space... There are already global apps that track police locations, might as well get yourself a swanky place to sleep for free. Rich people have servants to clean up the place anyways. I know someone who house-sits for the rich. Can you imagine getting paid to squat in an opulent mansion??
@@KWifler There used to be lists you could buy from things like Soldier of Fortune magazine "for sale" section. Depending on who you got it from you could do that all the way down the east coast for a couple months at a time. At least that's what I heard from a friend...
Or they could move to the rest of the country where you can spend that amount and have your mortgage paid off in 4 years like I did.
This isn't even really occupying much space, it's vertical big, not horizontal big. Chill out lol
It actually saves up space...
The end: “our capacity to build things has fully stripped our ability to understand the consequences “. Whenever has this not been a truth about the state of mankind
This video is insanely well done. The music, transitions, and narration - perfection! Great vibes while being super informative.
There was an article in the NY Timesnabout how these buildings actually are not working for the tenants , the garbage chutes that are not noise insulated and run through the habitation and it sounds like a freight train coming through when someone throws their garbage away... the swaying in high breeze that causes nausea, the water pipes that continually flood the floors below. Many won't sell because they will lose money on the new value... so they are hostages....
I went to NYC on a school trip all the way from southern Ontario. That super skinny tower right outside of central park confused the absolute hell out of me!
why, it's beautiful!
These are investment properties though, you won’t see the owner living here all year, they either let it sit empty most of the year, or rent it out.
Gross
Isn't that a good thing though? That means that they aren't buying regular housing and turning it into trophy housing like they do in other cities. This also means that the cumulative impact on city infrastructure is actually close to zero if indeed nobody lives in these buildings.
@@TohaBgood2 or...they could have built regular housing there.
@@6884 That is one of the most desirable places to live in the universe. Land costs are astronomical. How would you fund subsidized housing there? That would be a colossal waste of money vs. just building somewhere else.
This is SO fascinating. Thank you for explaining all this.
As an urban planning student, I greatly appreciate Cheddars recent foray into the space. Nice reference material 😊
Don’t those Ultrathin have problems with creaking, swaying, and water? Add the potential fire hazzard and I’d probably avoid. Well, not like I got the cash
Their small cross section actually helps because wind forces are minimized, like a super tall skinny radio tower. Their fire saftey, however, is... untested.
The fact that they're actually being built is the worst part. They exist solely for the leisure of the super rich.
I personally haven't heard such things about any building besides 432 Park, have you?
There's usually a counterweight to help with the swaying in the wind, actually!
The potential fire hazard came to mind too. How do first responders get to the top floor of a building when time is everything in emergencies and elevators might not be working?
How tall is too tall? It's not a matter of "can we", its "should we". I wouldn't have as much of an issue, if these massive buildings weren't just for the ultra rich. Build less luxury housing (which, is an issue all over - every new build is decked out to the extreme). Ensure the airspace that's being sold by these property owners have their savings trickle down to the people using that property, rather than just having the property owner profit for NOT building higher. It's a no brainer for property owners approached by developers.
If someone approached you and asked you to buy something you aren't using, that would cost you money to use.
@@MikeKayK look it up, it has a lot of problems
@@landonbarnett4865 Read my post again.
This is not "a can do attitude of the city" when most of the space will be bought by people from outside of the city.
As obnoxious at it is, having these mechanical floors reduces the cost of production and maintenance, as pushing gas electricity and hvac up 80+ floors through pipes and vents isn't exactly nominal. Plus stacking all of it on the room isn't great either due to weather and the elements.
Then again what do costs matter when they go for 167 million dollars for 1000 square feet come to think of it.
I work on these types of systems, and understand the advantages, even if they are "loopholes" and look weird lol
I've never been to NYC. I was raised in a small farming community and the big apple was always what my friends strove to escape to. We watched movies from the 80s and 90s and this is how we always imagined it. Big and overwhelming. For me, it is hard to picture it any other way. From an outsiders point of view, New York has a magical hold, though I'm sure people who live there might think differently.
it's magical, you should come here and try to live here too
Having lived in a city I dream of escaping to a small farming community.
Love your comment. I grew up in NYC Chinatown area. When I joined the Air Force, a lot of them come from small towns and farms just like you. The few I showed them around the city, they were in awe and thought it was so magical.
Not just NY, go to Vancouver - Canada, or other smaller at one time sleepy coastal citites, they are building apartment blocks only once scene in places like NY or Hong Kong.
it’s because of zoning laws. in the US they make it illegal in almost 80% of all urban areas to build anything other than single family houses or apartments . it the reason why we have cities that sprawl so much even tho they only have 4 million people in there metro area and why there is single family houses everywhere until u get downtown. we need to push for what we call is the missing middle where instead of single family houses we make town houses small apartment buildings and duplexes. NYC has a lot of these missing middle of u look at the brownstone in the cities older parts and obviously it not like people don’t like living in them cuz they sell for millions now when they used to be dirt cheap cuz they stop building them. A lot of cities need that missing middle to cure there housing crisis especially cities like Vancouver, Seattle,San francisco, los Angeles and etc.
Without tall buildings, we wouldn't see Spider-Man swinging, so I'm all for them.
No, we'd see him dunking himself into people's backyard pools and struggling over fences.
Spiderman can go to Chicago or Hong Kong...
Cheddar is so freaking educational. Thank you for the amazing content.
Perfect symbolism of NYC, glamorous as hell but empty inside.
*You definitely never been to NY. What you described was LA.*
"Our capacity to build things has outstripped our ability to understand the consequences."
And he says that like it's something that just happened.
I love the idea that the zoning code is not set in stone and they are constantly willing to make exceptions for new buildings. To me this shows a willingness to innovate. It seems so much better than what I constantly hear about California, in contrast, which is that no one can Build Anything Anywhere Near Anyone. Zoning laws, as well as rent control generally raise rents for everyone else, and cause the poor and the middle class to have to commute farther.
It really, really, is. San Francisco's strict zoning is a nightmare, to the point of arsons of rent controlled buildings and "affordable housing advocates" keeping affordable housing from getting built for decades. Really rich developers ether pay bribes or just build and pay fines later, and what DOES get approved ends up designed by committee and looks bland and generic, in a city known for it's "individuality" no less. When I was looking to buy a home, I was watching a show about New York and started Zillow window shopping, and wanted to cry when I realized how much more I could get for my generous in ANYWHERE but California budget. I could be living in a pre-war doorman building with a view of Central Park walking distance from the Guggenheim for less than a loft in the worst neighborhoods of San Francisco.
How about innovating somewhere else where ordinary people would benefit. One of the benefits of a sparser population could be a better, less stressful life than possible in the overcrowded conditions in most already developed cities. Mass transportation infrastructure is sorely needed more than high rises for the rich that would do nothing to trim those long commutes. It's been done in other 1st world countries. Why not here?
@@ejb5034 we are no longer a 1st world country - we are working our way down as the ultra wealthy continue to have our laws written to benefit themselves. They think that by going higher up in the air the pitchforks won't reach them when they get dusted off.
Pay offs changes all zoning codes!
But they are maneuvered only to help developers build vanity projects instead of things that could benefit the citizens
They forgot a key and massive beneficiary and someone who'll lobby for tall buildings all over the city.
Spider-Man
The New York City skyline used to look beautiful, these days it looks like someone is playing a losing game of Tetris.
I also think one of these "toothpick" skyscrapers would fall over immediately if someone managed to crash a passenger jet into it.
Ikr when the twin towers were standing it was such a beautiful thing to see twin huge buildings dominating a skyline
@@markgriffin2087 1950 nyc had the best skyline
@@pc_115 no after the twin towers were built to was the best after 9/11 it sucked ever since
@@markgriffin2087 wrong during the 60s tons of amazing buildings were demolished
I have absolutely no problem with the scale of these buildings. That is a fight as old as New York itself. The problem I have is that these buildings are being sold to hide money belonging to foreign oligarchs. They are financed by money laundering. And they eat up real estate space, removing billions of dollars worth of residential space from the market. The next tier down then have to spend more, and then so does the next tier down, and the bottom tier end up homeless or leaving the city.
That's why I left NYC. My rent went way up from around 2004 through 2014, much more than inflation, and I could no longer afford to live there.
NyC is already feeling the fallout from Covid and the work from home movement. People don't want to come back and commute now either. They realize how much money they waste doing it. Now the office buildings are going to start suffering too. What's the point of renting office space when no one wants to go work in there when they can work from home and save a butt load of money not commuting? NYC is about to feel very empty if they don't start paying attention to how overpriced they have become.
People who buy condos they don't live in. Are not the people NYC should be paying attention to. Its the neighborhoods and boroughs that make the City what it is.
@@GrumpyKay Yes, but buying those condos and not living in them takes a lot of square footage and value out of the entire housing market, which raised the prices at the bottom as well as everyone needs to pay a larger portion of their income for housing and increasingly people just can't afford it. It contributes to the other problem that you described accurately
NYC to Cheddar News: “Why are you so obsessed with me?” 😂
Great job dropping more knowledge Cheddar 👏 Enjoyed this one. Seek out loopholes folks. If millionaires can do it, so can us _thousandaires_
thousandaires? im a dollaraire
Some have all the luck.. I can't even afford common cents.
"Aww, I have three kids and no money. Why can't I have no kids and three money?" - Homer Simpson
Fantastic video. Hard to believe safety is amongst the least difficult mandates to fill in the design and build process. That last 30 seconds discussing the potential of a fire and how the mechanical spaces could effect fires (escaping, elevator use, intensifying fires in upper sections due to mechanical issues) could be a great follow up video. I wonder whether pollution evacuation and fresh air access would also be affected by super tall skinny buildings, with air flows being disrupted and the concentration of pollution not being able to escape and dissipate. Thanks so much.
What a terrific video, in every way. Thank you!
Great video. I'm so glad you filmed it for us, as I would hate to be within miles of such horrors, never mind work or even live there.
Jeez. I live in Connecticut, it's fine.
That's _exactly_ how it makes me feel to watch this; as fascinating and beautiful as it is, I prefer to appreciate the city from a distance. The engineering, the logistics of it all, staggers. But their lifestyle is a sacrifice made to excess.
The irony, which perhaps most New Yorkers don't realize, is that a common person of Appalachia (like myself) owns more real estate by area than most city-dwelling billionaires. And I can assure you that our respective standards of living are qualitatively commensurate, unless one actually believes that indulging the pampered ego is the superior lifestyle.
Though it would be nice to have a disposable million! Imagine what you could build out in the country with that.
OK but does the inside have stairs or just a lift because if the lift broke you'd be stuck until it was repaired and if there was a fire, they wouldn't be able evacuate everyone.
The problem is not that these developments are getting away with loopholes - It's that other projects with smaller price-tags and less influence cannot. Most regulations are only put in place so that they can be circumvented by those who have favor with the planning board.
when i travel for medical work, i can see philadelphia out in the distance from the highway. the comcast center is so large i feel genuine fear when i see it. there is something interesting about building tall in nyc for the rich while plunging entire neighborhoods into darkness.
e
it would be fun to go on top of the building and piss off the edge onto the poor people
I like the idea of concentrating the super wealthy into highly visible, super-tall, easily monitored and blockaded, small footprint, "residences."
That was a fascinating video and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you very much. I hate really really, really tall skyscrapers, but that’s probably because I’m afraid of heights
I love em, was just in NYC, and couldn't stop spotting them.
One interesting perspective I've heard on these buildings is that even though they are vanity projects and are indeed stupid, NOT having them might actually make the utra-rich compete with the normal rich for more regular buildings and living spaces. The normal rich would lose that battle and start duking it out with the upper middle class, who would lose THAT battle. The upper middle class would start competing with the lower middle class, who would lose, then so on and so forth, going lower and lower..........So, a very hesistant begruding yay for these buildings?...... Like, just let the ultra rich live have their crappy maintenance queens?......
Or, in short, build more. It does not matter who for. You cannot meet housing demand without increasing housing supply. Look at places like the Bay Area. Because of the beuracratic nightmare it is to build or change anything, that stops new homes being built. And so people with the greatest ability are the only ones who are able to afford anything.
But I heard that the ultra-rich don't even live in those buildings. They just buy it and let it rot.
@@_blank-_ i think a lot of rich people do that with real estate in general. So if they can't do it with these buildings they'd do it with other ones so the original statement still makes sense
NYC don't have a housing issue, it has a money issue. Their economy is so hyper inflated there is no way out. Its the typical, "I make 200 grand a year in NYC, how could I even eat making 75 grand somewhere else?" Not even thinking its all relative. 140 million I could pretty much buy up the whole peninsula I live on and I'm only 33 miles from the White House. For an apartment in the sky that at best will be there 75 years before they take it down for a new building. What happens then? Do you still own the block of air in the sky where your Apt used to be?
@@_blank-_ that doesn’t make money the way renting them out to the regular rich does
Thanks for reminding me to subscribe. Honestly. Your videos are so well researched and the ideas are fresh and new, that I leave the videos entrenched in deep thoughts and often forget to L&S. Anyway, great work. Liked & Subscribed.
Thank you for sharing.
I read that the open spaces had something to do with the wind load and building stability.
id say , you cant conflate the affordable housing issue with new billionaire housing.. Affordable housing is funded by the city , these ultra luxury buildings are private businesses. These new syscrapers are not impeding affording housing construction in any regard.
If anything, the billionaires’ property taxes will help fund public housing
@@stoutyyyy correct
NYC population is very high. It doesn't need more affordable housing. It needs less affordable housing. The density of people is very high. People need to move out if they can't afford to live there. the problem is them trying to live somewhere beyond their means.
Whether or not those towers are a good idea depends largely on whether the people buying the apartments want an apartment in NYC, or a real estate investment that is guaranteed to outperform many other investments. In the first case, even if they rarely stay there, they will take care of the place, hire a cleaner, and so on. In the second case, you get a very expensive slum until the bubble bursts.
When real estate prices go up because everybody wants to be there, it can be a problem, but it is still a good sign. When real estate prices go up because of speculative investment, the city suffers.
I think many of the apartments in these buildings are money laundromats. The rich have money they don't need and cry about paying higher taxes. They can literally wipe their asses with c-notes for the rest of their lives but cry like stuck pigs when asked to pay out money they feel they have the foremost responsibility to clutch onto like they'll starve if they have to give a poor person a handout.
There’s a new residential building going in near where I live (uptown on Broadway) that bought the air rights from a giant seminary. Everyone around here thinks it’s a huge eyesore, and nobody in the area will be able to afford it. Very saddening when there’s an affordable housing shortage in Manhattan.
*I had a pre-war co-op 66th and Lex ( Brown Harris Steverns building) and enjoyed NYC from 1990 to 2001 when my office got destroyed, left and have not been back. From my friends still remaining there, apparently I am not missing much. The Giuliani years were the BEST that city ever was in modern times.*
I believe the Burj Khalifa does this as well.
Every 10-20 floors, there’s a gap, dedicated solely to mechanical Equipment HVAC, and what not
"..demand for these towers is higher than ever"
Yea for money launderers from around the world.
@Katie McQueen
⬆⬆⬆ spam bot ⬆⬆⬆
They have pretty good point, I've never thought about the sun shade a big tower creates and how far that goes with how tall they are.
I’m in New York rn
The Macys parade just finished
It was wonderful
I’m loving It here!
"Our capacity to built things has outstripped our ability to fully understand consequences" - you can say that again, and again. The speed at which we are developing things and the physical and psychological issues that we are facing right now, the statement this man dropped, as one in new york slag might say is..
nothing but pure #facts
Preserving the city is better since I live in New York and wish I will be able to see the older buildings. It provided character for the City compared to the super skinny buildings as they're built too minimalistic, literally in the video the architecture designed it based on a trash. We should be providing infrastructure for the lower-income people since they have nowhere to go. Also preserving infrastructure with beautiful richness instead of being teardown example of Penn station and Singer buildings. “One entered the city like a god; one scuttles in now like a rat.” - Vincent Scully
Nah, tear down all the older buildings.
One of the best things that can be done to make sure there is bountiful housing is to remove barriers to construction. At the root of every housing crisis is a zoning board.
Great video!
I have a view of midtown. I mostly enjoy the evolving skyline, but was unhappy when I lost my view of the Chrysler Building. I think there is a place for these types of super thin buildings, but there should be more restrictions on where they can be built. The super tall Building they are building in Brooklyn looks out of place, and the new high rises at Journal Square in Jersey City are horrible. Building 60 story Buildings, where previously nothing was taller than 15 storie, shows poor planning, nor to mention they are ugly buildings.
Concrete brutalist eyesores
"Inspired by a trash can." What a fitting description
432 Park Avenue is riddled with problems. It's so thin, that it sways too much in the wind, the elevator shafts make loud howling noises when the wind blows, trash has to fall so far down the trash shoots that it sound like a bomb when it goes down, the elevators stop working if the building bends too much from the wind and the elevator shafts become bent, and pipes burst and cause flooding on the upper floors. Some of the owners are suing the developers of the building for life safety issues.
omg. that's horrible!
I'm living in Switzerland and this autumn moved into a 4th floor flat. For me, it's the highest I've ever lived. Looking at those skyscrapers makes me scared.
I think they're absolutely fascinating. I love watching architecture pushing the envelope. To me that's what Manhattan is all about.
I think with the amount they spend with dealing with crap in that city they could buy a huge chunk of land outside the city and start work on their own city where they can build as tall as they want and possibly make more affordable housing.
Only if they include rapid transit.
you want affordable housing? buy a tent
$1500? Try $2100
i hardly ever go to nyc but when i do i hate that one skinny building it aggravates me to look at
Thanks to CZcams algorithm for bringing me here. Interesting and well presented
to be honest, towers that tall just creep me out. It looks so unreal and scary. Beeing on such a tall tower is a mindblowing experience but i think its because we get a feeling and persepctive which is not natural for us humans.
The last sentence is to worry about. When extreme ambition can lead to any kind of (very dangerous) collapse.
Considering the quality of the video, I thought it was Mustard, but turns out it's Cheddar. Both staples in a good life.
Congrats Team, well done
Personally I think New York should get rid of FAR and other zoning laws and just let the skyline grow on its own through market forces. There are dozens of skyscrapers which were cancelled that I wish would have been built.
Agree
"Our capacity to build things has outstripped our ability to fully understand the consequences." Truer words haven't been said. It can apply to so many fields other than construction. #deep #buildyourproject #yougotthis
That's a strawman argument. If a B-52 can fly into the Empire State Building in 1945, and it reopens a week later, any rational person would understand that these buildings are extremely safe, and structurally sound. The fire suppression systems in these buildings alone is mind blowing.
i remember being in an internship when that building in the thumbnail was being built, thought the holes in it were so weird
I know it's just there as background but the music in this video had me vibing. Wish there was a list of names
"Our capacity to build things has outstripped our ability to fully understand the consequences." is a very power statement. But also has almost never not been true of humanity for our entire history. We never fully understand the consequences of our innovations, in every aspect of our culture.
consequences for a very tall building was shown over 2 decades ago. Nobody has learned anything, as they shrug it off as a one time thing.
Given the brief mention of a fire in this video, I've often wondered how are repairs done? Like re-installing broken windows 60, 70, 80 stories up? Guess a massive crane system and scaffolding would have to be secured to the entire building, to lift huge plate glass windows 800+ feet over the streets below?
Scary to think about! 😨
They would be using those window washing platforms to do that stuff.
There are actually little tiny boom lifts that “walk” to install glass from the inside. The windows are tough as hell though, so it’s a rare occurrence. What’s more of a question is what do you do with the building when it reaches the end of its design life and has to be torn down?
@@maxwellyedor7610 check jp morgan hq on 270 Park Avenue that was 50 stories and i watched them tear it down floor by floor over a few years to build a bigger one its amazing to see
@@maxwellyedor7610 - take it apart top down.. has been done many times
5:10 That building is not Central Park Tower, It is One57. In that video Central Park Tower hadn't been built yet.
@Katie McQueen wtf no
It’s counter balance I work at 432 park and it’s not “ unoccupied” it’s engineered that way to keep the building straight in high winds.
The old mantra Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
They're cool, but IDK if I would want to live in one even if I could afford it.
I’d love to live on the first floor (well, 2nd I guess, 1st floor is the manned lobby). Shortest distance to go up or down. Safest too. Better the less desirable unit in a desirable building than vice versa.
As a New Yorker, this is something that I’ve recently notice that I feel like not many people are talking about. It really bothers me how architects and engineers can just build tall, thin buildings with no design, have them stand out from the rest of the skyline, and have them available only for the Rich. This is becoming a trend and it’s ruining the architecture and culture that makes New York what it is. No other city skyline in the world are dealing with this then New York, and it hurts to see it unfold.
Further more, I wonder what type of consequences this will bring. Given these buildings are dramatically changing the skyline that is famous worldwide. These buildings stick out way too much with no purpose whatsoever and it will affect how people favor the city and therefor affect tourism. New York should really pick up on this.
4:29 lol, all 4 following towers are in Dubai!!!
I love the idea of building cool new buildings, but not when it’s for the ultra rich to brag about having these apartments that they will likely not even live in.
hasn't anyone watched Towering Inferno, but my question is how do you pull one of these super tall super dull (come on they are big rectangular boxes show me a picture of any of these with the background blurred out I couldn't tell you what it was ) down when someone wants to build the next tall box.
Would be interesting to see how many of the 432 residents decide to stay at one of their other homes during a hurricane. Probably doesn’t matter that 432 is not steel frame and is built with compression concrete like the Florida bridge.