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Strictly speaking the answer to your question is neither city has the volume or concentration of Chicago nor comes that close. Another way of saying the same thing is that both are (much) more similar to each other than to Chicago. Obviously Chicago is much bigger than either one (and has historically loved building iconic skyscrapers) and so will have a larger volume of skyscrapers. But the residential high rise chain along Lake Michigan to my mind makes its built form much different than cities that cluster their high rises in the core. Its not always visually apparent but Seattle is about 80% the population size of S.F. and the high rise core of both are in roughly similar ratios.
Seattle and SF have far less space to work with. Also, in the case of Seattle, strict height limits at the skyline’s current edges means that while Seattle will grow denser, the skyline will not grow outward much besides a few towers going up near Denny Way, the furthest north any of the towers will go. The more visually dramatic skyline changes are going to be in the University Distrcit and in Bellevue.
Chicago has a little over 1200 high rises while SF has a little over 450 and Seattle is around 225. Kind of apples to oranges BUT if you had to pick between the two it would clearly be SF.
always wondered why we don't have similar to Chicago, Philly etc on the West.
Of the five big cities on the west coast, San Diego and Seattle have height restrictions due to proximity to airports, LA and SF are in seismically active zones, and Portland, well, is Portland with somewhat arbitrary limits on building heights.
SF is nearly the same size, but it has multiple urban cores vs. one that totally dominates. Seattle is half the size of either.
SF has a substantially larger "greater downtown area" than Seattle, and it's booming. Seattle's is growing much faster however.
Seattle's greater downtown area is similar to Chicago's. Both have historically had a lot of underused sites in all directions, and still do despite the majority having gone away in the last couple decades. Related to that, both have substantial geographic dispersal of construction while SF's is heavily weighted toward wide area to the south. Seattle has some of SF's multiple-core aspect (Bellevue, Tacoma, U District), but its Silicon Valley equivalent (Redmond and Bellevue) is closer in and smaller than the main core. All three cores serve every aspect of a good downtown -- shopping, tourism, residents, tons of office workers, etc.
It's not an easy comparison. But overall, SF would be Chicago's peer on urbanity (less on scale) and Seattle a bit more in some other regards (way less scale).
Not in the west but long stretch of high rises along the water in Miami would be closest
Neither SF nor Seattle come close to Chicago on high rises
If anything Seatlle would seem somewhere between Boston and Baltimore as a better comparator
SF Boston or Philly
Just left Seattle today. Lots of construction. But stillcatching up and drops off right outside of the DT more so than any of the others
Did do the Link from airport and the S L U T to hutch from its terminus and back for a meeting. Got see the Amazon complex a bit
Seattle kind of felt like Austin meets SF in a way but more interesting than Austin and way better scenery
Lots of decent infill in Belltown and SLU
Last edited by kidphilly; 09-22-2017 at 07:23 PM..
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