What a Skyline Can Tell Us About a City

I'm a sucker for after-season savings and I was leafing through the calendars for 2009, at, where else Barnes and Noble? and found a calendar that depicted famous city skylines- Los Angeles, Dubai, Stockholm etc.,

As I was admiring the glittering towers I thought of another passage from the World is Flat by Friedman that was truly, pardon the pun, illuminating.

Friedman was speaking with a hedge fund manager named Dinakar Singh. Mr. Singh used to live in India and had returned for a business trip.

"I was on the sixth floor of a hotel in New Delhi," Mr. Singh recalled, "and when I looked out the window I could see for miles. How come? Because you do not have assured power in Delhi for elevators, so there are not many tall buildings." No sensible investor would want to build a tall building in a city where the power could go out at any moment and you might have to walk up twenty flights of stairs. The result is more urban sprawl and an inefficient use of space." (the World is Flat, 2005 edition, 329)

Expounding upon this, Friedman mentioned a trip he took to Dalian, [northeastern] China, which had been so completely transformed by all of the new modern glass-and-steel skyscrapers that had sprung up since the last time he visited, which was only one year ago, that he barely recognized the place.

Friedman had also been to Cairo in the summer of 1974 when "the three most prominent buildings in the city were the Nile Hilton, the Cairo Tower, and the Egyptian TV building. Thirty years later, in 2004, they are still the most prominent buildings there; the Cairo skyline has barely changed. . . So in Delhi, you can see forever. In Cairo, the skyline seems forever the same. In China, if you miss visiting a city for a year, it's like you haven't been there in forever." (329-330)

Three disparate cities, all of which have a sizable stake in the world playing field, but each which takes an individual approach to urban planning based on their resources. Fascinating.