# Revealed: Shanghai is the world's most highrise city



## saiho (Jun 28, 2009)

+1 ^^ Was typing this out when the spliff fairy beat me to the punch.



germantower said:


> ^^ This post perfectly illustrates why i have said that Manhattan is heavily underrated. Thanks for that streetscapeer.


That picture literally illustrates the opposite, how small New York's skyline foot print is compared to Shanghai's.


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## the spliff fairy (Oct 21, 2002)

Lower Manhattan superimposed on the Puxi half of the centre would look a bit like this, even with Pudong (and the rest of Puxi's centre) not included:


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## little universe (Jan 3, 2008)

First of all, thx streetscapeer for doing our favour by scaling the maps.

Those maps perfectly demonstrate how small Lower Manhattan is when compared to Shanghai's Inner Ring Road Circled Area (traditionally defined as Downtown Shanghai as shown incomplete in the map in red color).
Although there are also whole bunch of righrises area between the Inner Ring Road and Middle Ring Road. 




























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## Zaz965 (Jan 24, 2015)

nice job, guys, stunning and awesome


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## streetscapeer (Apr 30, 2004)

I think you guys are losing sight of what was being discussed. I think the whole point was that some posters were equivocating the size of Manhattan with the small area of Pudong (Lujiazui) + the Bund vicinity. Someone even mentioned that Lujiazui is comparable to half of Manhattan in size. From the map overlays posted, that doesn't even hold true for the lower 2/3rds of Manhattan. The skyscraper portion of Lujiazui is more comparable the southern tip of Manhattan. 

Then Germantower simply chimed in to say that Manhattan's size was being underestimated and that the areas of Shanghai it was being compared to were smaller. Which they are.




_Here are the orange and yellow arrows for comparison _





















_With all of Manhattan:_












I don't think anyone is really saying that Manhattan has more highrises than all of SH, just that comparing a couple of SH areas with the whole island of Manhattan is a bit disingenuous. 

Unrelated: It's a bit common for people to underestimate the size of Manhattan. I guess because it's always seen in comparison with the other much bigger boroughs.


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## drunkenmunkey888 (Aug 13, 2005)

streetscapeer said:


> I think you guys are losing sight of what was being discussed. I think the whole point was that some posters were equivocating the size of Manhattan with the small area of Pudong (Lujiazui) + the Bund vicinity. Someone even mentioned that Lujiazui is comparable to half of Manhattan in size. From the map overlays posted, that doesn't even hold true for the lower 2/3rds of Manhattan. The skyscraper portion of Lujiazui is more comparable the southern tip of Manhattan.
> 
> Then Germantower simply chimed in to say that Manhattan's size was being underestimated and that the areas of Shanghai it was being compared to were smaller. Which they were.
> 
> ...


I would say that the NYC metropolitan area is still way larger than Shanghai. You can't compare Manhattan with all of Shanghai because Manhattan is really just the equivalent of the inner ring road area. What happens when you superimpose just the four urban boroughs on Shanghai? It completely dwarfs Shanghai in size. And we're not talking about true suburbs like Long Island or Jersey. We're talking about boroughs with 20,000 ppl per sq mile (Queens) to 34,000 per sq mile (Bronx) and 37,000 per sq mile (Brooklyn). Once you factor in the suburbs of Northern Jersey, Southern NY State and Long Island, the comparison is even greater. These boroughs are massive cities in their own right and cannot be excluded from any conversation about NYC, as they are both de facto and de jure part of the city.

It's important that we compare apples to apples and to say that Shanghai is larger than Manhattan by comparing the entire urban area of Shanghai to just Manhattan is grossly misleading.


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## streetscapeer (Apr 30, 2004)

^^ That's a completely different discussion to the one we're having if you read the thread title and the last 2 pages of the thread itself icard:


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## little universe (Jan 3, 2008)

drunkenmunkey888 said:


> I would say that the NYC metropolitan area is still way larger than Shanghai. You can't compare Manhattan with all of Shanghai because Manhattan is really just the equivalent of the inner ring road area. What happens when you superimpose just the four urban boroughs on Shanghai? It completely dwarfs Shanghai in size. And we're not talking about true suburbs like Long Island or Jersey. We're talking about boroughs with 20,000 ppl per sq mile (Queens) to 34,000 per sq mile (Bronx) and 37,000 per sq mile (Brooklyn). Once you factor in the suburbs of Northern Jersey, Southern NY State and Long Island, the comparison is even greater. These boroughs are massive cities in their own right and cannot be excluded from any conversation about NYC, as they are both de facto and de jure part of the city.
> 
> It's important that we compare apples to apples and to say that Shanghai is larger than Manhattan by comparing the entire urban area of Shanghai to just Manhattan is grossly misleading.


^^

Way Bigger?...... No Way. 
You do know how double-standard you really are. 

When talking about New York Metropolitan Area, you listed all these plausible areas. 

While talking about Shanghai, you must had accidentally forgotten to include Suzhou's urban districts, and its two county-level satellite cities: Kunshan and Taicang (add up to more than 10 million people) to Shanghai's Metropolitan Area. 
And as far as I know Shanghai's Metro System (World's Biggest in terms of total length) is connected to Kunshan's Metro System.

I think the spliff fairy might be able to give the approximate figure how big Shanghai Metropolitan Area is.


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## little universe (Jan 3, 2008)

*Suzhou: the Other Big Player in Shanghai's Metropolitan Area *



2016 苏州金鸡湖-5 by Baishiya 白石崖, on Flickr


2016 苏州金鸡湖-9562 by Baishiya 白石崖, on Flickr









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## WingWing (Jun 14, 2013)

I think shanghai has larger area of highrises and its skyline also larger than new york


However i find new york has more densed skyline cluster


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## saiho (Jun 28, 2009)

streetscapeer said:


> I think you guys are losing sight of what was being discussed. I think the whole point was that some posters were equivocating the size of Manhattan with the small area of Pudong (Lujiazui) + the Bund vicinity. Someone even mentioned that Lujiazui is comparable to half of Manhattan in size. From the map overlays posted, that doesn't even hold true for the lower 2/3rds of Manhattan. The skyscraper portion of Lujiazui is more comparable the southern tip of Manhattan.
> 
> Then Germantower simply chimed in to say that Manhattan's size was being underestimated and that the areas of Shanghai it was being compared to were smaller. Which they are.


No they are not. If you look at what was said:



the spliff fairy said:


> *For scale the area in red (Lujiazui) is half the area of Manhattan.* This new area still being built has a density significantly lower than the rest of the city - but is still 22,000 per sq km (Manhattan is 26,000 per sq km).


This is the red area in question compared to Manhattan. Pretty close to what he said (half the size).


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## A Chicagoan (Aug 9, 2016)

little universe said:


> ^^
> 
> Way Bigger?...... No Way.
> You do know how double-standard you really are.
> ...


Perhaps you should also include Changzhou and Wuxi in the Shanghai metropolitan area.


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## Zaz965 (Jan 24, 2015)

just for curiosity, take a look at shanghai at 1930 








https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai#/media/File:Shanghai_1935_S1_AMS-WO.jpg


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## Zaz965 (Jan 24, 2015)

shanghai by satelite image 








https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai


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## Victhor (Sep 11, 2002)

the spliff fairy said:


> Where on earth are you getting these stats from?
> 
> 1. From what I can make out in the latest stats, 11% of all large buildings in SH are over 30 stories.
> 
> 2. Also using 100m as a cut-off point, we'd still be talking about 1,500 residential highrises above that threshold, not 15. And beating Benidorm by a hundred to one.


Residential buildings above 100 metres, in Shanghai there are only about 15-20, no more, most of them are in 2 different compounds in Lujiazui. My stats are from my own experience (and looking in google earth), I have been living here for one year now and paying special attention to building heights and... no residential buildings over 33-34 floors, only in very few specific cases. Outside Lujiazui, I can remember only 6, 45 floors the tallest, maybe there are 2 or 3 more that I don't know, but not taller than 40 floors. It's quite impressive anyway, but it's not as crazy as you think before really looking into it in detail.
I can believe there are 1500 over 30 floors, but the figure would be super low if they put a cut-off in 35 floors / 101 metres.


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## Victhor (Sep 11, 2002)

I guess the best way to compare NY and SH is by personal impressions, it is impossible to define a limit for these cities 
For me, NY is more extreme in skyscrapers, they are built taller and more close to each other, but it's ok, NY has being "growing" skyscrapers since 100 years before SH. Also SH has a way bigger area to develope without need to densify the downtown, and most new skyscrapers are being built like 10km far from the center, what is the correct way to grow the city, but worse for me that I like crazy dense city centers.


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## KillerZavatar (Jun 22, 2010)

^^
I visited both cities and they are really different and both have up and downsides to their skylines. New York City is extremely dense in Manhattan, but suffers from the rather low residential areas outside Manhattan. New York also has a lot of older skyscrapers, which makes it have very few facades that completely light up at night (it is however much better than most other cities in the US). Shanghai has very wide streets, which makes the skyline look not very dense. It has however a few extremely tall and extremely massive skyscrapers, which we all know and love. It also features a few skyscrapers that are basically one huge tv screen at night that puts Times Square to shame. Sadly Lujiazui has not many people though and it feels a bit lonely there, which can also be a good thing. New York has many historic buildings and Shanghai has many futuristic buildings. New York has some skinny and elegant skyscrapers, while Shanghai has really huge Towers. Both cities have a very different character and I think both cities should be beloved for different reasons and objectively no city is better than the other.


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## Zaz965 (Jan 24, 2015)

^^
you forgot the bund, where there are old lowrises


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## the spliff fairy (Oct 21, 2002)

Emporis (that relies on submitted data) puts Shanghai at 845 buildings over 100m.

https://www.emporis.com/city/100213/shanghai-china/status/existing/43

For comparison, NYC has 723:

https://www.emporis.com/city/101028/new-york-city-ny-usa/status/existing/37


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## droneriot (Apr 1, 2008)

On the city size debate, I got these numbers: NYC Metro 8,683 square kilometers, Shanghai-Suzhou Metro 8,387 square kilometers. No idea what is counted to belong in either and I don't think it matters, bottom line is they're about the same size and there's no need whatsoever to fight over it.

The actual subject of what city has the most highrises is far more interesting, I'd really love to see accurate statistics for Moscow and especially Sao Paulo.



the spliff fairy said:


> Emporis (that relies on submitted data) puts Shanghai at 845 buildings over 100m.
> 
> https://www.emporis.com/city/100213/shanghai-china/status/existing/43
> 
> ...


Uh I used the same site for Hong Kong just now and the 100m buildings stop at #3,156, which is twice as many as Shanghai and NYC combined...

https://www.emporis.com/city/101300/hong-kong-china/status/existing/158


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## the spliff fairy (Oct 21, 2002)

I don't think anyone's arguing about city area size, that was just an earlier misunderstanding from a previous post.


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## the spliff fairy (Oct 21, 2002)

droneriot said:


> The actual subject of what city has the most highrises is far more interesting, I'd really love to see accurate statistics for Moscow and especially Sao Paulo.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Yep the problem with Emporis is it only uses submitted data - relying on some online user volunteering official information on a specific building, with photo. The problem of course is it's West-centric, meaning it's very up-to-date and thorough for Europe and US etc, but not so for other countries who may be further afield on the net, or behind a stonking Great Firewall. To exacerbate the situation, Emporis doesn't accept data that's not in English or German (where it's from). Thus even if there are a few people out there who have found the site and have tried to submit to it, the data is denied (Zorg, a Spanish forumer who has been documenting the highrises rise in China for over a decade, completely had all his data rejected).

This meant for years places like Moscow, and more recently Seoul went off the radar until last year (turns out they both have more highrises than NYC, and didn't just suddenly build thousands of them in 2016), whilst Shanghai - according to Emporis - is not even in the top 20, and has less highrises than say London or Kiev. 

Despite all this, Shanghai's count is still greater than NYC's, at the 845 mark, but I reckon there are far more>100m. On wikipedia, it puts it at 1,475 over 100m, but without a source link.


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## droneriot (Apr 1, 2008)

I never would have thought of making any NYC comparisons in the first place to be honest, it just seems like a very bizarre comparison, because pretty much everybody on this planet knows that NYC doesn't have the endless fields of identical ghetto highrises that you find in China or South Korea, it has its two main skylines and two smaller ones in Queens and Brooklyn and that's pretty much it. For that subject, I'd personally only compare cities that are known for their many hundreds of cheap identical apartment buildings.


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## the spliff fairy (Oct 21, 2002)

Actually the whole thread has really been about usurping the official no 1 title holder - Hong Kong. Someone only mentioned NYC these past 2 pages.


And let's not open the can of worms on whether the apartment buildings are 'cheap' or not, as the building codes in the region - at great expense- have to be the strictest in the world (built to withstand major earthquake zones coupled with annual typhoons and floods - Shanghai even more so as it's on alluvial clay). By far the worst cheapening, disfigurement to the architecture are the air con units that'll appear like a skin disease on the lower income buildings, not the architecture itself.


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## Victhor (Sep 11, 2002)

the spliff fairy said:


> Emporis (that relies on submitted data) puts Shanghai at 845 buildings over 100m.
> 
> https://www.emporis.com/city/100213/shanghai-china/status/existing/43
> 
> ...


For Shanghai it is estimated height, assuming 100m=25floors, what is not true, since in Shanghai the limit is 100 metres for residential buildings, that means a lot of 30-34 floor buildings reach 99 metres, which in that list they are wrongly listed as 130 metres.


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## saiho (Jun 28, 2009)

Victhor said:


> For Shanghai it is estimated height, assuming 100m=25floors, what is not true, since in Shanghai the limit is 100 metres for residential buildings, that means a lot of 30-34 floor buildings reach 99 metres, which in that list they are wrongly listed as 130 metres.


I would not put too much stock on Shanghai's height limit regulations. The Chinese are notorious for having a blanket "Official Policy" but with loose enforcement and hundreds of exceptions and exemptions. Look at the old One Child Policy, there was hundreds of loop holes or the official population of Shenzhen (10 million) but if migrants are counted the number is around 20 million. 

Also how can all 30-34 story residential buildings be under 99m. CTBUH's calculator puts a 30 story residential building at approx 102m and 34 story building is 115m. But also look at the tops and bottoms of the buildings:



the spliff fairy said:


> shang aerial 14 by matteroffact, on Flickr
> 
> 
> 
> shang aerial 12 by matteroffact, on Flickr


CTBUH assumes a 7m tall (2 floor mechanical penthouse) which is pretty standard across the world but as you can see in the picture, many buildings have decorative crowns, pavilions, fins and other architectural features on top of the 2 floor mechanical penthouse adding to height. Now for the base you can see many buildings have a few retail and office floors in the bottom which are taller than most normal floors adding even more height. So knowing that how can all 30-34 story buildings be all under 99m? A 30 floor building just under 99m is plausible but add any more floors and you are pretty good to go in the +100m club or you are going to have like 7 foot ceilings. Throw in the fact that many of the buildings in this class also may be for the higher end market so ceiling heights over 9 feet may be used.


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## TowerVerre:) (Dec 1, 2012)

by FYSPD


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## CHINA0086 (Dec 27, 2014)

Shanghai


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## little universe (Jan 3, 2008)

^^

:nuts: OMG, picture speaks volumes. 

That image above dose not include the Greater Hongqiao Area (大虹桥地区, currently one of Shanghai's Construction Hot spots) aroud the Hongqiao Transportation Complex (Hongqiao Railway Station plus Hongqiao Airport) tho.

However, that one up posted by TowerVerre dose. 

Both are awesome photos, thx for sharing, guys.


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## TowerVerre:) (Dec 1, 2012)

^^And both also don't even show Xujiahui
Also by FYSDP


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## WingWing (Jun 14, 2013)

So NY has more or Shanghai? This is so absurd lol


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## the spliff fairy (Oct 21, 2002)

Go back one page, SH has >16,952 highrises, NYC has 6,250.


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## Bahromovies (Dec 26, 2016)

Shanghai at night


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