Why skyscrapers are so short
We need more buildings of up to six stories. We don't need more skyscrapers.<p>The low hanging fruit exists in the general lack of this mid-rise range of buildings in many places. Above six or ten stories, it's actually counterproductive in terms of things like energy efficiency.<p>Many good cities, like Paris, limit skyscrapers by policy on purpose because it's not actually the best human environment. Good urban environments involve a lot of mid-rise buildings clusters together, not a lot of skyscrapers.<p><i>that Roman residential buildings (insulae) maxed out at around 7 or 8 storeys, with 5 or 6 storeys being more common.</i><p>One of the reasons for that is that apartment buildings could not include kitchens. Cooking tech was based on using fire to cook and you couldn't build a multi story building with kitchens in every unit because you couldn't put fireplaces in the units.<p>Poor people in Roman cities bought prepared meals from street vendors. They didn't cook at home.<p>Buildings are primarily about meeting human needs. This article seems to fail to adequately understand the ways in which human habitation and human use drive such things far more than physics, technology and similar.