[finnman69]

Interesting image, but you can't build a 50 story wall of glass without a shitload of steel to withstand windloads. That means you wont have a transparent structure. Plus you have to be able to get to the top of it so that means elevators. Glass technology is amazing these days, but I suspect building 50 stories of empty void is pie in the sky. I rather see that same 50 stories rebuilt with rentable space. There will never be a hijacked plane ever again, so all the more reason to get the War on Terror won so people become comfortable with tall buildings again.

[ganesha]

There will never be a highjacked plane again.

I think it is important not to overreact to a current threat in a way that will affect all future design. In the late 1960s there were riots on college campuses. In reaction to that, a number of universities were designed deliberately to be ugly and have no social space in which people could congregate. There are no major civil disturbances at most universities today but we are permanently stuck with the consequences of bad design.

I support safety reforms which which genuinely make sense such as making buildings easier to evacuate, or improving the ability to fight fires at high elevations, but I think it would be a mistake to become permanently afraid to build tall inhabited structures.

NYC has very expensive housing costs. Rather than asking companies to rent offices on the top floors of 100 story towers, make the top half of the building residential. I believe this is what was done with the John Hancock building in Chicago.