San Antonio Skyscrapers (merged threads) (Houston, Austin: home, school, closing)

[Athena78]

Originally Posted by Guerilla

Are you comparing SA to El Paso? First, El Paso's metro is just a little over 700,000. It also doesn't have the amount of companies that SA does (reason for the low amount of buildings). SA has those companies, but they prefer to pave over the hill country with suburban style complexes (which I truly hate).

I'm not looking at just El Paso. Ciudad Juarez is "unofficially" part of the metropolitan area too since it's a border city. Both cities combined have a population of about 2 million. I look at it in that regard because both cities share the same economy and depend on each other.

I don't like how the hill country has been developed so much either, it's a threat to the Edwards Aquifer. At least the hill country continues on beyond what has been developed. It's good to know SA is started to grow westward, and not so much so in the hill country anymore.

[imaterry78259]

Its a shame to look at the Frost Bank Tower in SA versus the one in Austin. That says it all about SA downtown

[sapphire]

Originally Posted by imaterry78259

Its a shame to look at the Frost Bank Tower in SA versus the one in Austin. That says it all about SA downtown

SA's downtown is beautiful and vibrant. That's what it says.

Why would we want to be Austin? Sheesh, then how the heck are you going to know where you are if everything looks identical? LEAVE IT ALONE!!

[imaterry78259]

Skyscrapers symbolizes a city's power and economical strength.

[schertz1]

Frost Tower is not all that great. It's barely 400' without the crown. In terms of DT office buildings constructed this decade it seriously misses the mark.

[SilverCreek78250]

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know of the difference in cost for building a skyscraper as opposed to taking up more land? My point being that in a place like San Antonio, land is relatively cheap compared to say, New York. So imagine what it would cost in terms of the land price to build a huge campus like USAA in a place like NYC.

So it seems to me, in NYC it would be cheaper to buy a quarter of a city block, build up 100 stories and house an entire company. But in a place like SA, the cost of the land would allow companies to buy more space a build fewer stories, but larger footprint.

Since I'm not an architect, a builder or a Realtor, I really have no idea what I'm talking about, but it makes sense to me anyway. Thoughts?

[Eleanor Rigby]

Skyscrapers symbolizes a city's power and economical strength.

I am always really amused by the phallocentric/phallo-obsessive reasons people come up with to rationalize their weird skyscraper obsessions.

[AnthonySA]

One of my favorite cities in the world -- Rome -- lacks skyscrapers

[AnthonySA]

Followup... with the exception of St. Peter's Basilica

[Eleanor Rigby]

Paris keeps them segregated in a totally separate part of town - La Defense. They aren't in keeping with the nature of the city core.