Are skyscrapers unecessary?

unless people want the entire planet to be urban, which sadly some people do, skyscrapers are very necessary. Imagine modern China without skyscrapers. There wouldn't be any natural beauty left. It'd be all mountains and an ocean of lowrise and midrise housing. Also, office parks. Lots of people have strong feelings about office parks

Hudson11 said:

unless people want the entire planet to be urban, which sadly some people do, skyscrapers are very necessary. Imagine modern China without skyscrapers. There wouldn't be any natural beauty left. It'd be all mountains and an ocean of lowrise and midrise housing. Also, office parks. Lots of people have strong feelings about office parks

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Well that's not quite true. Just look at the density level in the city-proper of Paris which has very few people living in skyscrapers (with the majority living in low and mid rise apartment buildings), and a density of about 21,000/km2. China has about 1,403,500,365 people living in it. If they were all living as densely of Paris, that would require about 66,826.2 km2 which would be about 0.7% of China's land area of 9,596,961 km2. Less than one percent. Less total land than what Wikipedia lists for the combined land covered by the US's three largest metro areas (about 75,372 km2).

Skyscrapers might make for a more efficient use of land, but very rarely can they be called "necessary".

For sure they are not necessary. They are built largely to glorify some person or organization. And while this counts as a "benefit" (as long as it is their money and not the public's) there is a much greater benefit from building, say, a dozen 15 story buildings and the livable environment that goes with them.

That isn't to say that they don't make economic sense in a few places. But not in the great majority of places they are built.

Skyscrapers exceeding 300m are unnecessary.

The floor plat efficiency becomes increasing inefficient as it gets taller. There is also increasingly complex and expensive provisions needed for fire protection, cleaning and maintenance of the external facade.

For CBD, upto 250 300m will be more than sufficient.
For residential buildings, perhaps the bulk of the buildings can be between 15 to 25 storeys.