# One Mile High Skyscraper-Is It Feasible?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-mile-high-skyscraper-is-it-feasible/118780
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [July 13, 2002, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-mile-high-skyscraper-is-it-feasible/118780 "2002-07-13T14:16:47Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)
#### Post date: [July 13, 2002, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-mile-high-skyscraper-is-it-feasible/118780/1 "2002-07-13T14:16:47Z")
I just read an old book by Frank Llyod Wright, the famous architect (TESTAMENT-1957). In the book, he desribes his plans for a 500 story building, which would top out at 5,280 feet (one mile). He reports that his building could house 50,000 people, plus offices, restarants, theatres, etc.
Is the engineering concept feasible? I don’t know what the loading on the basement support beams would be…but uis steel STRONG enough to make such a building possible? Conceivably, elevators could be designed fast enough to empty such a large number of people…but would there be a market of people who want to live at high altitudes?
If built in manhattan, this structure would dominate the skyline…the Empire State Building would appear as a minor bump besides this leviathan! Perhaps this is what we should build on the site of the WTC-show these subhuman savages that we are not cowed by their disrespect for human life!😕
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [July 13, 2002, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-mile-high-skyscraper-is-it-feasible/118780/2 "2002-07-13T14:54:59Z")
From [How Stuff Works](http://www.howstuffworks.com/question680.htm)
> [@](#):
>
> Experts are divided about how high we can really go in the near future. Some say we could build a mile-high (5,280 ft / 1,609 m) building with existing technology, while others say we would need to develop lighter, stronger materials, faster elevators and advanced sway dampers before these buildings were feasible. Speaking only hypothetically, most engineers won’t impose an upper limit. Future technology advances could conceivably lead to building that are sky-high cities, many experts say, housing a million people or more.
The real problem, I understand, is getting people to the top. Not that elevators couldn’t be designed to do so, but that the number of elevators and the square footage they would take up make a building this high uneconomical. The upper floors would not have enough usable floor space to repay costs. There may very well be zoning restrictions to consider as well. And the NYC air space is hard enough to maneuver in now. Think of what a building three times the height of the Towers would do.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [July 13, 2002, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-mile-high-skyscraper-is-it-feasible/118780/3 "2002-07-13T15:03:43Z")
From [How Stuff Works](http://www.howstuffworks.com/question680.htm)
> [@](#):
>
> Experts are divided about how high we can really go in the near future. Some say we could build a mile-high (5,280 ft / 1,609 m) building with existing technology, while others say we would need to develop lighter, stronger materials, faster elevators and advanced sway dampers before these buildings were feasible. Speaking only hypothetically, most engineers won’t impose an upper limit. Future technology advances could conceivably lead to building that are sky-high cities, many experts say, housing a million people or more.
The real problem, I understand, is getting people to the top. Not that elevators couldn’t be designed to do so, but that the number of elevators and the square footage they would take up make a building this high uneconomical. The upper floors would not have enough usable floor space to repay costs. There may very well be zoning restrictions to consider as well. And the NYC air space is hard enough to maneuver in now. Think of what a building three times the height of the Towers would do.
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### Author:  [@capybara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capybara)
#### Post date: [July 13, 2002, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-mile-high-skyscraper-is-it-feasible/118780/4 "2002-07-13T15:20:25Z")
How tall is that conical tower that is in planning? It’s going to be verrry tall. . . ok 1228 m=4028 feet. . . 3/4 mile. Huh. If anyone actually agrees to let them build it. [Bionic Tower project](http://www.bionictower-bvs.com/espa%F1ol/datos/all.htm)
It’s planned to have sort of neighborhoods of 10 floors or so-- like living and working in a giant self-sustaining mall.
I’m not saying this is actually _possible_ , though.
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### Author:  [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)
#### Post date: [July 13, 2002, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-mile-high-skyscraper-is-it-feasible/118780/5 "2002-07-13T16:24:48Z")
Of course, once practical nanotechnological building methods become practical, the sky _won’t_ be the limit. I’m just hoping to see space elevators and whatnot in my lifetime.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [July 13, 2002, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-mile-high-skyscraper-is-it-feasible/118780/6 "2002-07-13T16:35:49Z")
The text from that Bionic Tower project reads like it was lifted directly from the Urbmons (Urban Monads) in Robert Silverberg’s novel _The World Inside_ (1971). In that world, all of humanity (except for a few farmers) lived in mile-high skyscrapers, with each forty floors representing a “city” with the higher classes living nearer the top. The rest of the ground area was given over to food production.
The novel, however, used the supposed “utopia” to show that it was really a dystopia, and that humanity was not designed to live like that.
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### Author:  [@LolaCocaCola](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LolaCocaCola)
#### Post date: [July 13, 2002, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-mile-high-skyscraper-is-it-feasible/118780/7 "2002-07-13T16:40:53Z")
The skyscrapers on Minority Report were a mile high. 😃
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### Author:  [@TridCloudwalker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TridCloudwalker)
#### Post date: [July 13, 2002, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-mile-high-skyscraper-is-it-feasible/118780/8 "2002-07-13T16:48:05Z")
i was watching a documentry back in November on the Discovery Channel about this kind of thing. And I vaguely recall one of the engineers saying that ventilation shafts, wiring, and especially water pipes AND pumps to get the water that high would take up nearly one or two thirds of the space provided leaving very little room left for offices and/or apartments. Building skyscrapers any higher would be uneconomical and pointless he said…at least, that was the gist of what I remember him saying. It was really late at night when I saw this documentry.
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### Author:  [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)
#### Post date: [July 13, 2002, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-mile-high-skyscraper-is-it-feasible/118780/9 "2002-07-13T18:42:42Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by TridCloudwalker \*
> \*\*i was watching a documentry back in November on the Discovery Channel about this kind of thing. And I vaguely recall one of the engineers saying that ventilation shafts, wiring, and especially water pipes AND pumps to get the water that high would take up nearly one or two thirds of the space provided leaving very little room left for offices and/or apartments. Building skyscrapers any higher would be uneconomical and pointless he said…at least, that was the gist of what I remember him saying. It was really late at night when I saw this documentry. \*\*
I think that this is the big problem. It’s not that we can’t do it, it’s that it you couldn’t recoup the costs of maintaining the building. Faster elevators wouldn’t really help: how many G-forces do you think people are willing to put up with? (_Wellcome to the elevator. Please strap yourselves in and prepare for takeoff. Our ETA at the 700th floor is 5 minutes. Passengers with heart conditions are advised to take the special slow elevator down the hall…_) And consider what happened to the WTC: If there’s a terrorist attack, or some kind of bad accident, how do you get everyone out quickly? As it is, 3000 people couldn’t get out of a 1000-foot building quickly enough. What would be the loss of life in a 5000-foot building?
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [July 13, 2002, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-mile-high-skyscraper-is-it-feasible/118780/10 "2002-07-13T19:25:16Z")
The big problem isn’t engineering. It’s finding enough tenants to fill the place at rents that are attractive but still high enough to pay the building and maintenance expenses.
There are also other logistical issues – if the people are all going home at 5:00 pm, it will lead to massive crowds in the lobby and on any transportation facility nearby.
In other words, if you building, there’s no guarantee they will come.
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### Author:  [@dantheman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dantheman)
#### Post date: [July 13, 2002, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-mile-high-skyscraper-is-it-feasible/118780/11 "2002-07-13T19:42:29Z")
Yeah, but my impression, **Chuck** , was that a building that high would be self-sustaining - the people who would be going home from, say, floor 500 would only be going to floor 300 or so, rather than down to the the ground floor and then through regular street traffic.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [July 13, 2002, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-mile-high-skyscraper-is-it-feasible/118780/12 "2002-07-13T20:33:28Z")
That’s the dream, **dantheman** , but it seems ridiculous in reality. Architects have been proclaiming self-contained buildings systems for decades, but they don’t come to pass.
We live in too fluid a society for everyone who works in a building to live there as well. (I think the latest statistic is that a total equal to one-sixth of the population moves each year.) People change jobs, have families, go to school, get transferred, die. And you just can’t put up a building and then expect everyone who finds a job there to uproot themselves and move into the building just to make it work more efficiently. Especially in a society in which the most popular ideal is a single family house surrounded by greenery, not packed into a building from which there is no escape.
These buildings are almost designed to frustrate people in their daily lives. Forget how long it would take to get out in a once-in-a-lifetime emergency. Imagine waiting for an elevator for a five to ten minute trip to the ground floor every single time you wanted to go out. How many elevators would you have to have to make even those numbers feasible? Look at the designs of any of these buildings. They taper. All of them. There is far less room in the upper floors for living or working space than lower down, but the need for elevators actually increases. Do you double-deck the elevators? Do you put in transfer floors? (More time lost.) If you have stores and facilities on upper levels then you need freight elevators to bring supplies to them. More space wasted. And what does happen in case of a fire?
There’s more. How many floors would you have to reserve for parking? How do you get the cars up 20, 50, 70 stories? What happens when a major storm passes? (In some tall buildings people already get a form of motion sickness from the swaying.)
Architectural history is littered with these dream projects. To my knowledge, none of them have come to fruition. Big buildings are built because they make economic sense in a few cases. Self-sustaining developments, whether high-rises, arcologies, or model communities, fail because they all depend on people bending their lives to do what will make the building work. This has never happened; I don’t think it ever will.
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### Author:  [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2002, 8:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-mile-high-skyscraper-is-it-feasible/118780/13 "2002-07-14T08:19:05Z")
After the towers fell, a friend of mine asked me if the fire code would allow a building one storey high, 1000 foot long with doors at only one end.
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### Author:  [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2002, 9:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-mile-high-skyscraper-is-it-feasible/118780/14 "2002-07-14T09:59:54Z")
> [@](#):
>
> The skyscrapers on Minority Report were a mile high.
And some of the buildings on Coruscant are several miles high…
Anyway, the only way for supertall buildings to become feasible will be for the supporting infrastructure to be built first. Leaping directly to mile-high buildings skips numerous steps. To counter the traffic problems, we’d need a more advanced transportation system (multi-level streets, better mass-transit, flying cars, or the like). To counter the problems of getting necessary resources to the top floor, you’d need a better elevator system, a stronger water pressure system, and more efficient sewage systems.
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### Author:  [@Doug\_Bowe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doug_Bowe)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2002, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-mile-high-skyscraper-is-it-feasible/118780/15 "2002-07-14T10:44:35Z")
There _are_ self-contained communities out there, but they’re out there because there was really no other choice. I’m thinking of places like Alpine, Milne Point or Endicott, Alaska. These are stations along the BP route.
After the WTC disaster the Wall Street Journal did a series of interviews and stories about skyscrapers. The civil engineers must have gone to the same school or read the same journals because they seemed to center on 80 stories.
With currently available technology the engineers believed that 80 stories was the most efficient size you could build a skyscraper (we’re talking car parking, people moving at peak times). Beyond that size the building size becomes a question of money and ego.
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### Author:  [@Hemlock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hemlock)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2002, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-mile-high-skyscraper-is-it-feasible/118780/16 "2002-07-14T12:57:30Z")
They’re just finishing an 88-story office block 5 minutes’ walk from my apartment. It has a central core that takes up (by my estimate) well over 25% of the surface area, containing elevators, stairwells, utilities, etc. It’s a case of diminishing returns. A mile-high tower would be more core than office/living space.
But I’m sure some cretin will do it one day.
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### Author:  [@Khan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khan)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2002, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-mile-high-skyscraper-is-it-feasible/118780/17 "2002-07-14T13:05:21Z")
I heard about this plan to build a structure in Chicago even higher than the Petronas towers by a few hundred feet. It was called the 7-[something] building based on where it was going to be built. It was in Popular Mechanics about two years ago. Anyone see this or know if it’s actually going to happen?
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### Author:  [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2002, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-mile-high-skyscraper-is-it-feasible/118780/18 "2002-07-14T14:36:19Z")
7 South Dearborn
[http://www.skyscrapers.com/english/worldmap/building/0.9/103010/index.html](http://www.skyscrapers.com/english/worldmap/building/0.9/103010/index.html)
I doubt things are moving forward right now.
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### Author:  [@owlofcreamcheese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/owlofcreamcheese)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2002, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-mile-high-skyscraper-is-it-feasible/118780/19 "2002-07-14T19:51:55Z")
I always thought they should build a single sky scraper out in a desert or something. make it a vertical city. lots of houseing lots of entertainment. make it sorta a vertical los vegas. it would be a gimick, but a cool one. make it totally self contained… and HUGE… way out in the desert (ahem… golden saucer from final fantasy 7) make the outside elaborate really elaborate…
I think a single tower in a totally flat desert… would be a scary impressive sight.
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### Author:  [@owlofcreamcheese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/owlofcreamcheese)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2002, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-mile-high-skyscraper-is-it-feasible/118780/20 "2002-07-14T19:58:10Z")
I always thought they should build a single sky scraper out in a desert or something. make it a vertical city. lots of houseing lots of entertainment. make it sorta a vertical los vegas. it would be a gimick, but a cool one. make it totally self contained… and HUGE… way out in the desert (ahem… golden saucer from final fantasy 7) make the outside elaborate really elaborate…
I think a single tower in a totally flat desert… would be a scary impressive sight.
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