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.