History of the world's tallest buildings
The buildings that were the tallest secular skyscrapers, which excludes religious buildings, were:
The list of tallest buildings is based on the default metric of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), that of measuring to the highest architectural element. Other criteria would generate a different list. Shanghai World Financial Center is not on the above list, but it surpassed Taipei 101 in 2008 to become the building with the highest occupied floor. Using the criteria of highest tip (including antennae), the World Trade Center in New York City was the world's tallest building from 1972 to 2000, until the Sears Tower in Chicago (which already had a higher occupied floor than the World Trade Center) had its antenna extended to give that building the world's tallest tip; a title it held until the 2010 completion of Burj Khalifa. Petronas Towers and Taipei 101 were never the world's tallest buildings by the highest–tip criteria.
List of tallest residential buildings
Since 2000, when CTBUH started maintaining a list of tallest residential skyscrapers The Belcher's Tower 1 and The Belcher's Tower 2 located in Hong Kong were the first tallest residential skyscrapers whose heights equal completed in 2000. In 2001, Trump World Tower in New York City became the tallest residential building in the world until it was surpassed in 2003 by the 21st Century Tower in Dubai. In 2012, Princess Tower in Dubai became the tallest residential building in the world before being surpassed by 432 Park Avenue in New York City in 2014. The percentage of residential buildings has been increased from 34 percent in 2009 to 45 percent in 2010 in residential skyscrapers whose height exceeds 200 metres, making Burj Khalifa the world's first megatall skyscraper to include residential space.