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by jellicle 4076 days ago
As a general rule, skyscrapers don't increase density much, as most of the space is taken up by elevators, plumbing, electrical, and so forth. A block of five-floor walkups is almost as dense as a 50-story tower-with-empty-space-around-it, and much less expensive to build.

Walkups, not skyscrapers, are the best bang for the buck.
2 comments
Dylan16807 4076 days ago
How much space around the skyscraper? Surely at least half of each floor is usable, right? I can't find any normal tower floor plans that differ.

Ten times as many floors is a lot of floors...

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design-of-homes 4076 days ago
This is an excerpt from a book called At Home in the City: an introduction to urban design which explains how the same plot of land can accomodate different types of development and different densities. Medium-rise blocks can match and exceed the density of high-rise blocks - see the attached pic in the excerpt below for an example:

"In 1972 Leslie Martin and Lionel March published a cogent analysis of the key forms of urban development. They postulated that on any given site development can take three basic forms which they called 'pavilion','street' and 'patio'. These forms cover different proportions of the ground area.

If developed with buildings of the same height and depth the pavilion form would provide the lowest density and the patio form the highest. On the other hand, constructing a given amount of floorspace would need buildings of different height depending on which form they took. Figure 2.2 illustrates this principle [see: http://imgur.com/LmJ1tTg ]. It shows that the same amount of floorspace could be built on the same site as a fifteen-storey tower block, five-storey linear blocks or a three-storey perimeter block."

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Dylan16807 4076 days ago
Interesting, but they seem to be keeping the floorspace constant on purpose there. With such a narrow tower you could fit four on that plot!
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xasos 4076 days ago
Interesting. Most of SF residents I know still live in small houses or low-rise buildings, so there is a lot of potential for more living space (if current situation worsens in that way it is)
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