!!!Shanghai, biggest skyline of the world!!!

[JOSHYNOSHY]

Originally Posted by Pegasusbsb27

Biggest in the world?!...Hardly.

I would disagree with you on that

I think ity is the biggest in the world

I you cannot compare any city to that skyline
It looks like the ccity from Star wars

[christos-greece]

Indeed, those 2 buildings of Shanghai are very "known" from that movie

Originally Posted by Kintoy

these two buildings on the left are the ones shown in Mission Impossible III, where Tom Cruise penetrated to steal the rabbit's foot

[Pegasusbsb27]

Originally Posted by JOSHYNOSHY

I would disagree with you on that

I think ity is the biggest in the world

I you cannot compare any city to that skyline
It looks like the ccity from Star wars

I can think of large number of cities with bigger skylines ( he said biggest not tallest). São Paulo is, for sure, one of them!

[10025]

A "big" skyline means a skyline that boasts both space and height.
"Space" means: 1. a city has a large land area; 2. tall buildings spread all over this large land area (as is the case of all big and medium-sized Chinese cities), instead of jostling each other at a small patch of land called "downtown" (as is the case of most US, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand cities);
"Height" means: 1. a city has a big number of "consideralblly" tall buildings; 2. there are real skyscrapers among these buildings.
We can give a list of cities of the world that have decent skylines, but not all the skylines can be described as "big".
Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing have spaces, but not heights;
New York, Chicago, Hong Kong and Dubai have heights, but not sapces;
Cities like Toronto, Sydney and Singapore have neither.
Maybe the only cities that can compete with Shanghai in both ways are Shanghai's Chinese brothers, say, Guangzhou and Chongqing. (Don't forget, skylines of Chinese cities are changing everyday, larger and higher of course, compared with cities in other parts of the world except a few.

Mind you:
I occasionally add new pics to the very first post of this thread. Check it! )

[Severiano]

I read two pages back that Shanghai has a moratorium on highrise development and that people have to live within a certain amount of green-space. I have to say that this a long with mandatory gates in all housing complexes is the only thing holding Shanghai back from being the biggest and best city in the world. Shanghai, though dense, could use more density IMO. It isn't as dense as Hong Kong, and Hong Kong is still a more liveable city than Shanghai! Light restrictions are needed, of course, but I think that over planning and coming up with figures for how much green space is needed is ridiculous. (see Beijing) Pretty soon they are going to require a certain amount of parking spots for a building, which will really mess everything up (see Tampa)

What Shanghai really needs is some massive swaths of greenspace like the Expo area to be turned into green space. They can also expand Zhongshan park while they are at it. And maybe have a green belt around the city instead of having "eco-friendly" cities built way in the middle of nowhere. Shanghai with 30-40 million people will not be a nightmere, it will be awesome. Look at Tokyo! Also, the closer the people are to eachother, the less the need will be for long distance transportation and 40km subway lines.

A city can be unbelieveably dense and still be highly liveable. I believe that with proper roads, transport, plumbing, utilities etc. The denser the better. (ie. Taipei, Hong Kong, Singapore) If the Shanghai government wants to pass liveability laws maybe they should pass a law that outlaws using a jackhammer at the foot of a (my)residential building at 6am on a Saturday. That would be nice

[EEplus]

Originally Posted by Shera

True, but only "2" more 400m+ buildings than Sao Paulo, heh!
Sao Paulo has much more 12-25 story buildings than Shanghai.

No, shangehai has 3 buildings which rank top-10 in our planet, that is enough!

[the spliff fairy]

Originally Posted by Severiano

I read two pages back that Shanghai has a moratorium on highrise development and that people have to live within a certain amount of green-space. I have to say that this a long with mandatory gates in all housing complexes is the only thing holding Shanghai back from being the biggest and best city in the world. Shanghai, though dense, could use more density IMO. It isn't as dense as Hong Kong, and Hong Kong is still a more liveable city than Shanghai! Light restrictions are needed, of course, but I think that over planning and coming up with figures for how much green space is needed is ridiculous. (see Beijing) Pretty soon they are going to require a certain amount of parking spots for a building, which will really mess everything up (see Tampa)

What Shanghai really needs is some massive swaths of greenspace like the Expo area to be turned into green space. They can also expand Zhongshan park while they are at it. And maybe have a green belt around the city instead of having "eco-friendly" cities built way in the middle of nowhere. Shanghai with 30-40 million people will not be a nightmere, it will be awesome. Look at Tokyo! Also, the closer the people are to eachother, the less the need will be for long distance transportation and 40km subway lines.

A city can be unbelieveably dense and still be highly liveable. I believe that with proper roads, transport, plumbing, utilities etc. The denser the better. (ie. Taipei, Hong Kong, Singapore) If the Shanghai government wants to pass liveability laws maybe they should pass a law that outlaws using a jackhammer at the foot of a (my)residential building at 6am on a Saturday. That would be nice

I know what youre saying but I wouldnt worry too much. Public transport will remain king thanks to the worlds biggest metro u/c right now; also Shanghai is denser than Kowloon+HK island in an area about 30 sq. miles (about a third larger than Manhattan), where half its population cram into only 10 percent of the land:

Shanghai core density per sq. mile (overall area 31.2 sq. miles):

Huangpu 119,898
Nanshi 147,072
Luwan 106,215
Jing'an 103,804
Zhabei 70,947
Hongkou 94,941]

By comparison HK's built up areas are 91,500 per sq. mile.


In other words Shanghai would benefit from becoming greener, but it will definitely stay highrise and dense still, and reliant on public infrastructure.

And as for the satellite cities, they will be swallowed up soon enough, (but still functioning as mutinodal centres of the same conurbation):

urban areas in green:



The last thing Shanghai can afford is lowrise sprawl, the city would become highly unworkable with so many people. Also the Courbousien scenario (highrises over expressways and flat open land) will not manifest itself in the built up centre - that too would be unworkable and too expensive/ destructive. However the new outskirts will probably see some Courbousien layouts, but more akin to the HK New Towns models.

[Shera]

Originally Posted by Severiano

I read two pages back that Shanghai has a moratorium on highrise development and that people have to live within a certain amount of green-space. I have to say that this a long with mandatory gates in all housing complexes is the only thing holding Shanghai back from being the biggest and best city in the world. Shanghai, though dense, could use more density IMO. It isn't as dense as Hong Kong, and Hong Kong is still a more liveable city than Shanghai! Light restrictions are needed, of course, but I think that over planning and coming up with figures for how much green space is needed is ridiculous. (see Beijing) Pretty soon they are going to require a certain amount of parking spots for a building, which will really mess everything up (see Tampa)

What Shanghai really needs is some massive swaths of greenspace like the Expo area to be turned into green space. They can also expand Zhongshan park while they are at it. And maybe have a green belt around the city instead of having "eco-friendly" cities built way in the middle of nowhere. Shanghai with 30-40 million people will not be a nightmere, it will be awesome. Look at Tokyo! Also, the closer the people are to eachother, the less the need will be for long distance transportation and 40km subway lines.

A city can be unbelieveably dense and still be highly liveable. I believe that with proper roads, transport, plumbing, utilities etc. The denser the better. (ie. Taipei, Hong Kong, Singapore) If the Shanghai government wants to pass liveability laws maybe they should pass a law that outlaws using a jackhammer at the foot of a (my)residential building at 6am on a Saturday. That would be nice

Nicely said! I agree with everything you said!

Originally Posted by EEplus

No, shangehai has 3 buildings which rank top-10 in our planet, that is enough!

Cool, but it has only 2 buildings over 400m, so why did you say "no"? Hmm?

Originally Posted by the spliff fairy

I know what youre saying but I wouldnt worry too much. Public transport will remain king thanks to the worlds biggest metro u/c right now; also Shanghai is denser than Kowloon+HK island in an area about 30 sq. miles (about a third larger than Manhattan), where half its population cram into only 10 percent of the land:

Shanghai core density per sq. mile (overall area 31.2 sq. miles):

Huangpu 119,898
Nanshi 147,072
Luwan 106,215
Jing'an 103,804
Zhabei 70,947
Hongkou 94,941]

By comparison HK's built up areas are 91,500 per sq. mile.


In other words Shanghai would benefit from becoming greener, but it will definitely stay highrise and dense still, and reliant on public infrastructure.

And as for the satellite cities, they will be swallowed up soon enough, (but still functioning as mutinodal centres of the same conurbation):

urban areas in green:



The last thing Shanghai can afford is lowrise sprawl, the city would become highly unworkable with so many people. Also the Courbousien scenario (highrises over expressways and flat open land) will not manifest itself in the built up centre - that too would be unworkable and too expensive/ destructive. However the new outskirts will probably see some Courbousien layouts, but more akin to the HK New Towns models.

Yeah, it looks like Shanghai might swallow up Kunshan very shortly, a city of nearly 2 million people. And then it'd become connected to Suzhou. Perhaps it could happen in as soon as 20 years.

And that's impressive how the entire built-up area of HK territory has only 66,666 per square mile (91,500 for HK Island and Kowloon). But Shanghai is far from being alone as a super-dense city.

Other megacities (10+ million people) with greater "central" densities that include 5 million people or so could be:

1) Mumbai -- the core covering more people than Shanghai has far greater density than Shanghai's central districts
2) Dhaka -- same with above
3) Delhi
4) Manila
5) Cairo
6) Kolkata
7) Shenzhen
8) Karachi

For China, Chongqing is probably also denser than Shanghai, although it has only like 5 million in between the mountain ranges. Hangzhou is another dense city (although covering a smaller area in the core).

During 1910, Manhattan had over 400,000 per sq. mile in some of its lower districts. Now it's only around 100,000 in places like Soho (lower east) or in upper west. The living conditions in poorer countries are somewhat like in Manhattan during the 1910's, which is why those low-rise buildings in Dhaka or Mumbai for example are so dense with people.

[Goyazny]

Originally Posted by LamDai

Shanghai is amazing but I think It's still far behind HongKong

I have visited all cities mentioned. HK, GZhou, Shanghai...

The title is true. It is bigger than all others. In a way that it is somehow concentrated.

Gzhou goes too broad. And fragmented .

Hong Kong is tiny... ( I mean, it is huge, but compared to Canton and Shanghai it is smaller). Though, HK looks prettier. ..

And growing....This is pictured 18 months ago. Compare to today's status...

image hosted on flickr

[Mr. Pitkin*]

mmm... I LOVE Shanghai!!!! realy!

[Kintoy]

Pudong area and the SWFC is on the upper right corner

(found this in one of the threads, re-uploaded it in photobucket)

[the spliff fairy]

^yep, strange thing about that the city was even more crowded population-wise before the skyscrapers. One of the densest parts of the city is still the Old City, devoid of highrises, whilst in 1987 some areas counted 440,000 per sq. mile (eg the Nanjing Rd and Houhai areas).

Originally Posted by Shera

Nicely said! I agree with everything you said!



Cool, but it has only 2 buildings over 400m, so why did you say "no"? Hmm?



Yeah, it looks like Shanghai might swallow up Kunshan very shortly, a city of nearly 2 million people. And then it'd become connected to Suzhou. Perhaps it could happen in as soon as 20 years.
.

I think it's already happening - Shanghai's doubled its size in a decade, and that's way before suburbanisation.

[Shera]

I think 400,000 people per sq. mile is "dangerous", especially for low-rise buildings. It's unsanitary, and was not a thing of America since 1910 in Manhattan.

So I guess a "theoretical" maximum of 100-150,000 people per sq. mile is a good thing, whether it's high-rise or not.

[kicksilver]

Man, I wonder what traffic is like in Shanghai at rush hour!

[Galandar]

It is so incredible. I crazily like Shangai's skyline. And that tallest tower is superb at night

[Severiano]

It sucks! But you can take the subway, there is no traffic down there. I have been in a back up at 10pm on a week night here!

[christos-greece]

One skyline photo of Shanghai:
image hosted on flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wind-watcher/3666376653/

[Heroico]

this skyline is really amazing!

[insomniac00]

Originally Posted by Prof Von Nuzzlebrush

My word Shanghai's skyline is enormous

makes new york look like a baby

[LS Kim]

Originally Posted by JOSHYNOSHY

I would disagree with you on that

I think ity is the biggest in the world

I you cannot compare any city to that skyline
It looks like the ccity from Star wars

Look this thread http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=995447

BTW, Shanghai is Fantastic! Very impressive