As your illustration shows, what you are imagining and enjoying is looking down. Gehl rightly focuses on looking up. The other advantage of low-rise density is the reduced difference between the two. On a Parisian street you can shout up to windows and balconies and have conversations from street to any story (an old Parisian street). Skyscrapers are monuments to wealth, frozen capital, that serve those who own them and would like to look down on the rest of us.

Ouch, @1 I disagree. I like the giant marvels of engineering towering over my head. It serves as a constant reminder of just how significant and weird humanity is. Maybe it has something to do with growing up surrounded by mountains.

But I really came to say that, while it is true eye level has its limits and at some point buildings become faceless (but not necessarily monsters), the key to this is by developing the part the eye focuses on -- the first 5 stories -- correctly.

I am not even an amateur architect but I'd say a good example of doing the first 5 stories right is Trace Lofts, and a bad example is Fountain Court. We're talking about people so I kept it to apartment buildings.

The former has a street-level that is enjoyable and pleasing to the eye. The latter has a street level that is dominated by the feeling of wanting to get onto the next block because there is nothing to see or do.

I'm not sure how I feel about the building on Broadway across from SCCC. It seems like it should be a "good usage" example, but then I look at how pretty it is and the stores inside of it and wonder if I'm on the east side for a second. Thankfully, within moments, this dreadful thought is ended by being asked for change and/or a cigarette, and I know I'm not in Bellevue.

Bellevue takes a different approach anyway: build the offices without any regard to the street, and then build a strip mall next door.

The larger buildings get the more they tend to be manifestations of monstrous ego rather than coherent solutions to the practical problems of urban civic life.

http://kunstlercast.com/shows/kunstlerca…

Humans can live in jail cells, too. What's that got to do with how people WANT to live?

You can achieve spectacularly high densities with medium-height buildings, four or five stories. These are in fact by far the best suited for the normal range of human economies.

The problem with tall towers is severely limited opportunities for interaction, which is what makes economies grow. I'm thinking of shops. Your world doesn't have shops in it, and thus doesn't have enough economic activity to support itself.

In practice skyscraper living is economically destructive in other ways. Without constant daily commercial interaction, you end up with large numbers of people who don't participate in the economy at all. These people do not become philosophers, they become criminals.

You are advocating dystopia. Really, I think you need to get out more; you have lived in London, I know, but didn't appear to absorb any lessons there. You should venture out to the places where your experiment was undertaken to see the horrors that were created there, in the outskirts of London or Paris or Milan or Madrid. There is a reason that these buildings are being demolished as fast as they can be, while the row houses (which oftentimes provide denser living than towers) are being gentrified and sold for millions.

Note that Dubai, despite its towers (which no one will ever live in), is not dense at all; it is barely as dense as Oklahoma City, the least dense major metropolis in the US, and nowhere near as dense as Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Bakersfield, and other capitals of sprawl.

In places where poor people are allowed to take control of their own destiny, what do they build to supplant their shantytowns? Five story apartment blocks with shops on the ground floor. Go look at the gecekondus in Instanbul. Compare the life there to the vacuous wasteland of Dubai.

Or maybe we have both? Presuming that your preferences on how to live or what buildings should look like are shared by everyone is just arrogance.

Even massive cities have sections that feature smaller structures. Seems we can have a very dense core with surrounding areas that are less dense. Need not be one or the other.

Humans can "live" in smog infested cities...although their lifespans are reduced.

Vertical density is a form of architectural pollution.

The product of fiendish social engineers, who want to steal the land and wealth of the middle class.

For the most part, living even at 5 stories is a unique product of the 20th century.

Like atomic radiation, and pervasive cancer and other ecological disasters.

In the end, we naturally spread and take the needed room to breath.

Urbusters be damned.

Mid-rise seems to work best for habitations. super tall buildings can be beautiful to look at but are not always the best way to live. Tall buildings are expensive to maintain. all those elevators and halls to clean. High-rises work for the economically-advantaged, but not the dis-advantaged. Door staff and maintenance keep things safe and well kept for the middle and upper classes. Look at high-risehousing projects: insta-slums. Requiring quotas for low-income housing in new development doesn't really help. The really well-off avoid that scenario.

Charles Mudede uses the adaptability of humans and our limitless imagination to justify his dream of living in the sky...and yet denies anyone else their dream of living beyond our planetary bounds.

He's got a serious "what I want, not what you want" problem.

...and he needs to watch "Metropolis" again. (Or "Fifth Element" even.)

@2, oh I completely agree with your appetite for how significant and weird humanity is. But I think skyscrapers are a relatively crude and wasteful way to get there, like getting ice cubes by dragging an iceberg around with you. Most of the skyscraper is sheer background. Human weirdness can play out horizontally too, so that all of it is ultimately part of our experience. Constant, the Dutch architect, made his bizarre "New Babylon," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Babylon… and there's Archigram's "Plug-In City," which while not strictly horizontal, made the vertical into something other than an inaccessible backdrop. http://va312ozgunkilic.wordpress.com/201…

Also, @4, you, and I'm sure Charles, must know that wonderfully dystopian elaboration on skyscraper living, J.G. Ballard's nightmarish HIGH RISE. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Rise Things go poorly in the high rise...

@4 Agreeing with every word you said here.

Additionally, densely packed ultra-high high rises block out the sun on the street level, making it an unpleasant place to be. You can't have neighborhood gardens or people strolling along enjoying the sunshine and watching cloud shapes. True, it's possible to make community spaces on top of buildings, but ones at the height Charles is talking about would be too tall for that to be comfortable. And, again, there's that isolating factor, with each building being an island unto itself.

Buildings that are of a height that can be managed on foot, that are short enough that the sun can nourish community gardens and soak into upturned faces, short enough to encourage people to come outside and walk down the sidewalk and visit the shop down the street, are ideal.

@10

And what about Sharon Stone in "Sliver" ?

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1257846/sh…

High rise communities (like Vancouver) are such soulless, awful testaments to income inequality where the super rich get to gaze down on the lowly people who never see sunlight. I'm assuming you currently live in the middle of downtown, on a lower level?

Step 1: Go to Chicago or New York
Step 2: Step outside on a sunny day
Step 3: Notice Sun
Step 4: Notice that areas with super-tall buildings can also have low-rise buildings interspersed to create a more open feel. Areas with only low-rise buildings end up with 60-foot walls on either side of the street, typically right in your face because they built up to the sidewalk to compensate for the height handicap.

I love this. Arguing about the feasibility and incarnation of the contemporary city not in technical or utilitarian terms, but purely according to art and poetic prose. There are questions worth exploring, and questions not worth exploring. This has provided me another variable; there are questions not worth exploring by certain manners.

100% agree with Fnarf at @4.

Currently typing this from San Francisco's sunless, wind-tunneled financial district.

Urban planning fanboys love to (1) tell everyone else how to live and (2) don't care who pays for it, nor how.

#17

And the people who fund them mostly live on country estates, with acres of sunlight!

Charles,
Hmm? Interesting discussion. I'm of two minds. I'm not so sure "Taller is better" for urban living. Whenever I hear of tall urban residences I think of public housing. And, when I think of that, I think of the notorious Pruitt-Igoe complex in St. Louis or Cabrini-Green and Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago which were evident failures in public high-rise living (I've resided in both cities). On the other hand, if managed well or if one pays for that "charm" it can be fun. I recall a party I went to ages ago at Carl Sandburg Village on Chicago's Near Noth Side and watching the Chicago Air & Water Show from the 28th story. Totally cool.

Still, Fnarf has a point. There is a sense of detachment living that high up. Does one really get to know their neighbors? I, for one am glad I reside at ground level. But, I think the verdict is still out as to whether "Taller is better".

This isn't following the thread of comments, nor very much the post...but I feel like I have to say it.

I'm split in two and a hypocrite.

I love the Earth. I think humans are the worst thing that ever happened to it. Any sign of humanity makes my skin crawl. I hate cities, buildings, concrete, lights, sounds, people. I don't want to be put in any sort of density situation. Yet, here I am, in Seattle. I leave as much as possible, renting a Zipcar and heading for the mountains almost every weekend. I love the Earth. I want to mitigate our impact as much as possible, and I think living in density may solve that. I think people should ride bikes, walk, or take the bus (not drive to the country every weekend). I am a hypocrite.

Urban density I can live (would want to live in) with:

https://www.google.com/maps?q=43.769963,…

Florence, Italy

Actually, you can pack populations more densely when you don't have skyscrapers, if that's your aim.

All the structure needed to move people between floors like elevators and stairwells take up a lot of space. But apart from that amount of solid structure you need just to keep 30 or 40 or 50 stories upright takes up about 30% or more of the space. Basically skyscrapers are to architects what the huge SUV is to a mom of 2. They do a wonderful job showing off but serve little other purpose. You can actually get more usable space with shorter, smaller buildings that don't require all that structure.

Which isn't to say they don't look good. Mooring off Blake Island and watching the city lights come on while sipping wine on the boats deck is a very pleasant experience. From a distance. And that's the thing. They don't feel human except from a distance where you can take them in. When you're in that leviathan core they feel claustrophobic and mechanized and cold- inhuman.

And as much as I hate to agree with Fnarf about anything, Paris and Rome and London all feel human and pleasant, places you'd want to go for your shopping or dining or just to walk around. Or to live. So economically you get better bang for your buck from low rise urban cores as well.

This is apart from the negative sociological effects of packing too many people into too small a space, of course. Kitty Genovese could never have happened in my suburb. There aren't enough people for the mental shift of "I should do something, but someone else will/already has." At my cabin or my house neighbors call if anything looks wrong like lights on at strange times, vehicles driving down my road they don't recognize etc. At my house or my cabin you know the people and when things don't look right. You know the phone number to call. IMeanwhile in dense populations like Seattle you get a pompous idiot watching your house being robbed while sipping a cup of tea and pondering racial stereotyping.

@22: For a contractor, you sure are ignorant of architecture.

@VL

For a biologist you sure seem to think you know something about architecture.

Here's a test though- The earth is approximately 93 million miles from the sun. I'm just curious what means you find to disagree with that. I mean, that seems to be your driving purpose, to disagree on general principles. Have fun!

(Hint- since the orbit of Earth is not a perfect circle, you could pick a very specific point in that orbit and quibble on that ground. You could argue that kilometers are the more usual method of scientific measurement on that scale. You could argue that I don't refer to the Sun in our specific solar system, so the measurement is too vague. Just to get you started, kiddo. You're welcome.)

@25: The Earth is approximately 93 million miles from the sun. I'm going to briefly allude to stopped clocks and leave it at that.
Sure, high-rises are less volume-efficient than low-rises due to the extra structural support they require. But we don't care about volume so much as lateral area, which skyscrapers are wonderfully efficient with.
I know a thing or two about architecture, and most of it comes from a basic understanding of physics and geometry. An evolutionary biologist like me shouldn't, by rights, be better-informed on architectural issues than a contractor like you. But there you have it. Maybe you're defective, maybe you're just willfully ignorant.

@7: Agreed. A typical skyscraper dedicates something like a third of its lower floors just to elevator shafts. (It would be even more if not for the sky lobby concept, which saves space but also makes traveling down to street level less convenient.) They're also isolating, because a trip down to the street becomes a major time commitment. And they're unpleasant to walk around. Even a relatively modest high-rise like the UW Tower is unpleasant to walk around, because of the way it brings strong, gusty winds down to street level.
Skyscrapers are pretty from a distance and awe-inspiring to look down from, but as ways to house people they're lacking.

Next up (pun intended): Toll elevators!

best way to separate people is to concentrate them.