Who is building the most in North America?
 

I occasionally look at the Toronto City Compilation thread. Absolutely amazing how much is going on there. I'm curious how this compares to New York or other cities in North America.

The stats on skyscrapers are easy enough to find here and on Emporis. But I'm curious too about any kind of urban (as opposed to rural or suburban) development.

I'd guess probably between Toronto, Vancouver, New York and Miami/South FL. If you consider Jersey City aside from New York it is also very impressive on its own.

Most other places are pretty tepid, and new projects are pretty infrequently being released now, mainly because of the urban to subruban bleed seen nationwide. This is less of a problem in Canada since violent crime isn't really a thing.

Mexico city?

They are not skyscrapers, of course, because of the Height Act restrictions but DC has the most most tower cranes of any city in the United States.

https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/bl...tionwide/18114

Three of the most explosive mid-sized MSA/CSA's are Nashville, Austin and Salt Lake City. As far as I know in certain types of development there is nothing tepid about either of these three. Salt Lake's three interlocking metros have been experiencing boomtown growth for more than a decade now, and it is only accelerating. Even COVID couldn't make a dent in many of its development niches. All sectors of its economic expansion and infrastructure development are now on fire. Sometime before the end of this decade Greater Salt Lake City will move in to the 3 million-plus category.

DC is impressive, but gets overlooked because of the height limit.

I guess one way to look at this would be number of multi-family units being constructed and the number of commercial square footage but minus space attributable to office parks, if any.

DC is probably top 3.

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Also, can a mod move this to the city discussion forum?

I do and when you consider a city of its size, it definitely punches above its weight class.

Atlanta is far from tepid. There are highrises and midrises starting weekly. I don’t understand the ‘tepid’ comment at all. Practically all the medium sized metros across the southeast are booming with construction activity. In Atlanta and Nashville, they are really experiencing the largest intown expansions in their histories I would say and that’s a lot given the growth of these cities in the 90’s.

Miami/South FL isn't building all that much these days, especially compared to the wild construction of the 2005-2008 days or even the 2014-2018 days. There are fewer projects now but they are generally bigger, and nothing geared or marketed towards locals is ever built hence our lack of housing supply.

To anyone calling out my ''tepid'' comment- We're not talking about midrises. Sure, Salt Lake, Nashville and the usual suspects are growing, but they are not building many legit ''Skyscrapers'' like the original poster pointed out in the first post.

If you consider their growth to be ''skyscrapers'' then we clearly have different views on urban development. These places are doing lots of mid-rise infill and then of course, endless sprawl. If you compare the growth of Toronto (high-rise), Jersey City (mid to high rise) to somewhere like Nashville or Salt Lake, you know what I'm talking about.

The only one that *might* qualify in the typical sunbelt suspects is Austin, they are building supertalls. If I'm mistaken, please let me know where else they are building things about 600 feet. Thanks!

I know everyone has hometown booster-ism and there is certainty a lot of development happening in Atlanta, but it's an awful lot of "Houston Donuts" in the suburbs -- not exactly the most urban type of development.

What's the multi-family housing starts for Atlanta proper?

Data from Emporis on number of 12+ floors buildings under construction in select US cities. Please feel free to update the numbers below if the data on Emporis is inaccurate.

New York City - 299
Toronto - 243
Houston - 81
Miami - 38
Chicago - 34
Panama City, Panama - 27
Detroit - 26
Los Angeles - 25
Atlanta - 21
Seattle - 17 (22 per mhays)
Philadelphia - 17
Jersey City - 16
Boston - 12
Dallas - 12
Bellevue - 11

New York and Toronto also benefit from a large percentage of their total growth being in high rise form.

Seattle has fallen off in total growth a bit, and slowed a little in highrises. I count 22 of at least 12 stories (actually at least 17 stories) underway in city limits. But 5 of those are part of twin sets, so maybe that's the 17.

Bellevue has taken the Amazon fire hose and is at 11 towers underway plus one or two in site prep...

22 is probably the accurate number for Seattle. Emporis may not be the most up to date, but it's the best available data aggregation that I'm aware of.

Detroit has 26 buildings 12+ floors U/C?

Surprising, and pretty damn impressive!

That's not bad at all for a city that size - one most would overlook. Added to the list.

Are there accurate counts for tower cranes currently up by city anywhere? I know we try to keep track of that in the Denver development thread in the Mountain West subforum. That is usually a good indicator of growth and construction in a given city especially urban projects that require a tower crane

My guess would be no - at least not an accurate count anyway. It's whatever we on the skyscraper forums are able to count and report.

I did see an article once talking about the number of cranes in a city, but the numbers were determined to be bogus after further analysis.

yeah, that caught my eye too. I'd like to know where...I check the Detroit development threads pretty often, and while there is a lot going on there, I don't think 26 12+ story buildings under construction sounds right.

Downtown Phoenix had 20 cranes up at one point this year with roughly 3,500 residential units under construction. With projects like Astra(cities new tallest), Central Station, and Sky on 6th waiting to start along a bunch of other projects over 12 stories between 7th Ave and 7th street and Jackson to the south and I10.

This is what I was able to find on Emporis
https://www.emporis.com/city/101037/.../all-buildings

Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center - 70 floors
Hudson Tower - 49 floors
Huntington Tower - 20 floors
Exchange - 16 floors
Hudson Block - 14 floors

Yeah, the numbers for Detroit look bogus. Emporis is less reliable than I thought. Anyone know the real number for Detroit?

In respect of Toronto, the website www.urbantoronto.ca is probably the definitive source.

In respect of what's 'under construction'........

Under-construction
100-199m = 78
200-299m = 10
300m+ = 2

You can count the total number or work out the 12-storey number using their database:

https://urbantoronto.ca/database/projects/

www.urbantoronto.ca now has a thread for cranes in that City.

As at June 14 the number was 323.

Thread link:

https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/thread...d.32227/page-5

Agreed. Since returning to LA I've noticed a ton of construction, but almost all of it is between three and seven floors.

^^I like the low rise feel of most of LA, but some things leave me scratching my head. Not sure why they are constructing such low rise things in the Hollywood area, IMO they should be really cramming the density there. Theres a housing shortage, it's obvious, but nobody seems willing to increase building height.

The Ren Cen has been around since the 70s. Unless it's undergoing a major remodel, and we're counting that as 'under construction', it should not be on this list. So Detroit has 4 buildings over 12 stories under construction, not 26. That sounds more realistic. Also makes me call into question that entire list. What an egregious error.

What the hell happened to Chicago? Wow, that's pathetic

Nvm

No kidding! So it's the individual urban forums for each city that are going to have the most accurate count followed by SSP/SSC database.

With that said, can those most familiar with their city read out their numbers for number of buildings u/c and/or number of cranes? I tried to count Toronto's numbers, but there was too many. :haha:

I gave you the cranes number just above.


The buildings in UT's Database don't have a break-out at 12 floors, they have a breakout at 100M (roughly 30 residential storeys)

# of Cranes

Toronto - 323
Phoenix - 20

Interested in the DC number if anyone has it.

Regarding just residential I can name 10 buildings over 20 stories under construction in downtown and midtown for Atlanta with 5 more in last phase of permitting. That doesn’t count any office, medical, educational or mid rise residential nor other sections of the city such as Buckhead, West Midtown or EST which would add another 7-10 residential highrises. The Texas donuts are probably greater than 30 in the city proper. You clearly aren’t as familiar as you claim to be considering the city has been outpacing the suburbs for 5 years now in multi family residential.

But that's exactly the point. 10 buildings over 20 stories are not that big of a deal when we're talking about what are the top cities in North America for construction. And I live in this town, down the street from Grant Park. The hometown booster-ism in Atlanta is on a whole other level...

Montréal?
Monterrey?

Behind Detroit?

Is there a list for just office buildings?

I haven't found anything current for Montreal yet.

But in 2017, The Toronto Star reported 150 cranes in Montreal.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/...stability.html

Vancouver BC has SSP posters tracking cranes.

Forumer Leftcoaster has the numbers as at May 31st of this year:

174

Link to that post, here:

https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...&postcount=114

Some Austin information: Not in the same league with Toronto, but it is certainly a transformative amount of current and recent construction with more on the horizon. https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...05&postcount=6

No, I think Detroit has 26 buildings in total under construction.

No matter how much Torontonians wish they were in the us theyr are still in Canada last I checked.

With no slight intended to our American cousins, I don't think you'll find a large number of Torontonians wishing their City were on the other side of the border. LOL

Hey man im not shaming you guys. Most of us sometimes wish we were something we're not.

I'd imagine somewhere between 140-150 of those cranes are 12fl+ buildings.


So much of the high rise construction is in the suburbs now.

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I work in the development industry, and most of my work is in the west. But I'm very familiar with the goings on in Atlanta, and if you were to take the total amount of construction going on intown as the OP alluded - not just high-rises but midrises and all forms of housing, I would guess Atlanta would be in the top handful, alongside Austin and Nashville on a per-capita basis.

Nearly every block in the city of Atlanta (outside the downtown core) has some form of residential construction going on...I don't think it's just boosterism.

I'm surprised Houston has that many. The local economy isn't exactly in the greatest shape lately. I'd at least assumed Austin would be building way more than us.

Seems that much of the 12+ story building construction is residential, not office. So Houston must be densifying its core areas like downtown and midtown. LA must be as well... the numbers do seem a little high for Houston however.

For Nashville, Bossabreezes rightly points out that the city is building absolutely massive amounts of urban low to mid rise (two to ten stories) infill throughout the city which makes up the bulk of overall construction.

He is also correct that in terms of total numbers it's highrise construction obviously doesn't hold a candle to the top cities such as New York and Toronto. So as such, perhaps Nashville doesn't belong in this discussion.

However, I don't think the level of highrise construction in Nashville is being fully realized and appreciated by those that don't live there or visit there on a regular basis, which is, of course, completely understandable. In my opinion, both on a per capita basis considering it's metro area doesn't even officially have two million people yet, and also in terms of how much it has added to the skyline relative to the skyline's size, I think Nashville certainly belongs in the conversation.

I'm not entirely sure what metric is being used to determine what is a highrise, but I see the emporis (which is not an exhaustive list) twelve story and over standard being used by many, so we'll go with that.

Using the aforementioned standards, these are the approximate numbers for Nashville, although I'm quite sure they're somewhat off as I'm using data that is several months old (which is why I don't blame emporis for having outdated or incomplete data)... this also doesn't include several large scale multiple tower developments that are just in the conceptual phase at the moment:

COMPLETED OVER LAST FIVE YEARS: 42

UNDER VARIOUS STAGES OF CONSTRUCTION: 40

PROPOSED/APPROVED: 63

Wrong thread.

crazy high numbers for Montreal. Of course Toronto has been insane for decades, and Vancouver too.

Who is building the most?

Easy check: which city gained the most in population over X amount of years.