Joshua Varughese

Public Space
Where skyscrapers exist in New York City, they often fall disproportionately into three categories (in large part reflecting economic forces).
1) They are usually either single-use or limited mixed-use office buildings
2) They are residential towers inhabited mostly by wealthy families (who frequently have additional homes elsewhere);
3) They are affordable public housing projects created by government.

Office buildings, of course, don’t do anything by themselves to increase residential density, and depend on their location and the pattern of commuting. If they are largely single-use offices whose employees empty out in the evening, there is clearly not much of an ecological benefit.

Residential towers that segregate by income are also obviously problematic — in effect, forming “vertical gated communities” that limit interaction and social capital across socio-economic groups. Moreover, like horizontal gated communities, they bottle up the activity of residents that might otherwise help to enliven the public realm.

Research shows that the benefits of density are not linear, but taper off as density increases. In other words, there is an optimum density, and anything above that density produces more negative effects over the positive ones. That “sweet spot” seems to be in the neighborhood of about 50 people per acre. And many cities around the world achieve this density without tall buildings, and while creating a very appealing, livable environment

The massive contradiction here is that the city is building so much to sell, yet so little to use.
Even if the overall supply mattered, luxury condo buildings are still wonders of inefficiency. Relatively small thirteen-story building, built in 1957 on the Upper East Side, has 119 apartments. Why then is there a need for skyscrapers for residential housing?

Light Issue and Shadows
The Municipal Art Society of New York, founded in 1893, is a non-profit membership organization that fights for intelligent urban planning, design and preservation through education, dialogue and advocacy in New York City.

The Muncipal Art Society’s report ‘Accidental Skyline’ reveals how the southern part of Central Park would be almost entirely covered by shadows in winter thanks to new mega-towers.

A new generation of mega-tall skyscrapers being built along 57th St. for foreign billionaires will cast a long shadow over New York’s premier green space, a new report shows. Meanwhile, real New Yorkers are left in the shadows.

The shadow report reveals the worst-case scenario — every Dec. 21, the winter solstice, the sunless zone will extend 20 blocks into Central Park and reach the Lake and Ramble

Those shadows are no casual matter, since all of the new buildings are relatively close to Central Park, and they are arranged in an arc that extends from the southeast to the southwest corner of the park, not so different from the arc of the daily path of the sun. The impact will vary from season to season, but there is little doubt that the southern portion of the park will be in more shadow than it is today. Given the slenderness of the new towers, it might be more accurate to say that the southern end of the park is someday going to look striped.

“It’s troubling that the sky’s the limit when it comes to one of our most precious public spaces,” said Vin Cipolla, president of the Municipal Art Society, which conducted the report to highlight the need for oversight of development around parks

The skyscrapers in question are rising “as of right,” meaning the public has no say over their size. Developers are able to build so high because they bought air rights from neighboring buildings — and technological advances now allow for the construction of super thin mega-towers on small footprints traditionally suited for 40 story buildings.

“Central Park was designed for everyone, but the tall buildings pushed me further into the middle of the park to be in the sunshine,” said Elyse Fox, who was in the park with her 3-year-old.
The Municipal Art Society proposes that any project with significant shadow impacts on major public spaces should undergo public review. This would give public officials and the community board the opportunity to weigh in.

Economic Inequality

57th Street
The even more troubling shadow these buildings cast, however, is a social and economic one. If you seek a symbol of income inequality, look no farther than 57th Street. These new buildings are so expensive, even by New York standards, because they are built mainly for the global super-rich, people who live in the Middle East or China or Latin America and travel between London and Shanghai and São Paulo and Moscow as if they were going from Brooklyn to Manhattan. It’s only in the last decade that developers have put up buildings specifically with these buyers in mind. These are places not for its full-time residents but for the top 1 percent of the 1 percent to touch down in when the mood strikes.

“Poor Door”
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration is under fire for signing off on a building plan that allows a new luxury high-rise on Manhattan’s western edge to have a separate entrance for low-income residents.
About 20 percent of the units in the 33-story tower will be reserved for low- and middle-income residents. But all the affordable units will be grouped in one area, and those tenants will have to enter through a separate door.

“This developer must go back, seal the one door and make it so all residents go through the same door,” City Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal said. “It’s a disgrace.”

The developer, Extell Development, defends the two doors, saying it complied with zoning laws by essentially creating two separate buildings.

Housing advocates say Extell is exploiting a loophole in the laws, while City Hall blames the prior administration for creating those laws and approving the deal. De Blasio swept into office promising to address income inequality.

Financial Issues

Skyscraper Curse -Economic crisis is lurking near
The Curse originated during the Panic of 1907. Two skyscrapers were under construction during this time, the Singer Building opened in 1908 and the Metropolitan Life Building opened in 1909, and each would become the world’s tallest.
In 1929, America’s Great Depression was ushered in with the opening of the 40 Wall Street Building (currently the Trump Building), then came the Chrysler Building in 1930, and the Empire State Building in 1931.
The booming 1960s was followed by the stagflation of the 1970s and saw more record-setting skyscrapers being built with inflated money, among them World Trade Towers 1 & 2 and the Sears Building which all opened in the early 1970s.
Is there a real connection between skyscraper records and economic crisis, or is this just coincidence?

The connection begins with interest rates that are artificially and temporally too low; a phenomenon brought about by out-of-control central banks, such as the Federal Reserve. Artificially low interest rates drive up profits temporarily as they drive down the costs of production, which then increases spending in the economy. Higher profit margins encourage new investments in bigger, longer-term capital projects boosting profit expectations even higher. Naturally, stock market levels are driven ever higher under these times. Normally, record-setting skyscrapers are difficult and costly ventures, but history has shown that they proliferate in this easy-money environment.

As the effects of the artificial stimulus from central banks takes hold in the economy the costs of production rise unexpectedly, markets grow surprisingly more competitive driving down prices, and projects which once seemed highly profitable (such as record setting skyscrapers) open up in bankruptcy at ribbon-cutting time.

Just remember that that “excess” can only occur in markets manipulated by central banks, like the Federal Reserve.

The Gap between Poor and Rich
In China, the richest 10 percent make 21 times more money than the poorest 10 percent, according to United Nations statistics. In the United States, that number is 16 times. In Germany it’s 7 times, and in Japan, it’s 4.5 times. Germany and Japan have few skyscrapers. China and the United States have a lot.

China and New York City that have perhaps the greatest distance between their rich and poor, also lead the world in skyscraper construction. Nations that have relatively equitable incomes, much more so than the United States, have few skyscrapers, whereas nations with great wealth and great poverty have more.

A city’s skyline is a physical portrait of the distribution of wealth and thus political power in a society. For example, cities and countries where the middle and lower classes have more political power tend to regulate skyscrapers out of existence. As cool as 1,000-foot buildings may look, they don’t make particularly good neighbors. They blot out light and air to surrounding properties, and with them usually comes soaring real estate values.

For instance, inequality hit a peak in the late 1920s—when the Chrysler and Empire State buildings went up—and in the current decade, which is also witnessing a new round of skyscrapers.

Energy Efficiency Lies
LEED Lies: Bank Of America’s “Green” Skyscraper Is Actually An Energy Guzzler
It’s a not-so-secret secret that LEED, the country’s primary green building accreditation program, is broken. Operated by the nonprofit U.S. Green Building Council, LEED (that’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) awards building projects various certifications based on their green design features.

The project was heralded as “the world’s most environmentally responsible high-rise office building.” Three years later, new reports prove that assessment to be at best a naive overstatement, and at worst, a gross misjudgment.

Sam Roudman in his NY Times article points to data released by the city last fall, which suggests that the 55-story Bank of America Tower is actually a energy-consuming machine. The billion-dollar building generates more greenhouse gases and uses more energy than any other office tower its size in Manhattan, Roudman reports. In fact, it’s less energy efficient than buildings with lower LEED ratings, like the Goldman Sachs headquarters and those that predate the certification system altogether, such as the Empire State Building.

LEED neglects how buildings are used and instead focuses on issues of architectural and engineering design, much of which can be qualified as “cosmetic.”
Instead these are some of the more important aspects to consider when calculating the energy efficiency of skyscrapers:
1) Increasingly high embodied energy of steel and concrete per floor area, with increasing height
2) Significantly higher exterior exposure to wind and sun, with higher resulting heat gain/loss
3) Challenges of operable windows and ventilation effects above about 30 stories
4) Challenge of maintenance and repair (in some cases these require high energy and cost)

Citigroup Skyscraper Scare
Due to a design oversight and changes during construction, the building as initially completed was structurally unsound. For his original design, LeMessurier calculated wind load on the building when wind blew from due north, east, south, or west, blowing directly against one side. He did not calculate wind loads when the wind blew from one of the quarters (northeast, northwest, southeast, or southwest), against a corner. In June 1978, civil engineering student at Princeton University, Diane Hartley, and design engineer Joel Weinstein, recalculated the wind loads on the building, this time including quartering winds. This recalculation revealed that with a quartering wind, there was a 40% increase in wind loads and a 160% increase in the load at all connection joints.

LeMessurier’s original design for the “chevron” load braces used welded joints. But during construction, to save labor and material costs, bolted joints were used instead – a change made after city approval of the plans. These bolted joints were substantially weaker. With hurricane force winds the bolts could shear and the building could collapse.

LeMessurier also discovered that his firm had used New York City’s truss safety factor of 1:1 instead of the column safety factor of 1:2.

All this meant that the building was in critical danger. The problems were discovered in June, the beginning of hurricane season, and had to be corrected quickly.

Ultimately he persuaded Citicorp to repair the building without informing the public, to avoid ruining his professional reputation.

For the next three months, construction crews working at night welded 2″ steel plates over each of the skyscraper’s 200 bolted joints. They worked during the night, after each work day, almost unknown to the general public. Six weeks into the work, a major storm (Hurricane Ella) was off Cape Hatteras and heading for New York.
Because nothing happened, the danger was kept hidden from the public for almost 20 years. It was publicized in a lengthy article in The New Yorker in 1995.

LeMessurier was criticized for insufficient oversight leading to bolted rather than welded joints, for not informing the endangered neighbors, for actively misleading the public about the extent of the danger during the reinforcement process, and for not informing other architects about the problem and solution for two decades.

Secretly – Owned Iranian Skyscraper
The U.S. government is set to seize a Manhattan skyscraper that prosecutors say is secretly owned and controlled by the Iranian government.

The 36-story tower is located on Fifth Avenue in the heart of New York City, adjacent to Rockefeller Center, and is home to a number of corporate tenants. Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, said Tuesday that the seizure and sale of the property would be the government’s largest-ever terrorism-related forfeiture.

A federal judge authorized the seizure in September 2013, finding that the building’s owners had violated federal money laundering laws and sanctions against Iran.
The building was constructed in the 1970’s by a non-profit organization operated by the Shah of Iran, who was overthrown at the end of that decade. Today, the property is 60% owned by that organization, now called the Alavi Foundation, and 40% owned by Assa Corporation.

Prosecutors say Assa Corporation is a front for a bank owned and controlled by the Iranian government, which also is alleged to control the Alavi Foundation. The co-owners have allegedly been transferring rental income back to Tehran.