San Antonio is closing in on the top 20 largest urbanized areas as well moving up in the metro rankings. S.A. should surpass St. Louis, and Baltimore within the next few years but probably always trail Denver.
You can't say a city is not large merely based on the amount of tall buildings. Its safe to say that there are countless cities worldwide that are major urban centers that don't have a large inventory of skyscrapers. Two come to mind, D.C. and Rome. One cannot discount these cities because the lack of significant amount of skyscrapers. These cities excel in other categories.
If you have read my previous posts on this topic, San Antonio's downtown area is not filled with super talls, but it has great density and infill more so than cities like Austin. Austin has more skyscrapers and is building more than several considerably larger cities.
San Antonio boomed before Austin. The city boomed during the 70s, 80's, 90's and most of it's high rise office buildings, residential towers were built just outside downtown or out in the suburbs when downtowns were not the focus at least for S.A.
Downtown S.A. is a total different animal in comparison with newer cities like the ones listed above, much more stipulations as far as what can be built in or around all the historical building stock. Such as view sheds in close proximity to key historical landmarks. San Antonio's Historic and Design and Review Commission (HDRC)has blocked the development of Skyscrapers or toned down what can be built as far as height, design etc.
Furthermore, San Antonio has more business corridors all over the city and high rise buildings permeate the landscape unlike many cities that have most all their notable high rise buildings in one district.
Downtown S.A. is just now gaining momentum with many new Skycrapers/high rises u/c or in the pipeline.
Overall, San Antonio has more buildings over 10 floors than cities like Austin, Charlotte and Nashville which does make it feel and look like a bigger city outside the core. San Antonio has over 200 buildings that are 10 floors plus and the other cities have in the low 100 to 140 range.
This gives San Antonio a more heavily urbanized feel and built up environment than the cities listed above plus the urbanized population is larger as well than said cities. I feel buildings of this size do add to infill and density and are also impressive as a lofty skyscraper. I wish S.A. had more, but it doesn't seem to be in a super tall building building frenzy or race as the other cities. Hopefully soon San Antonio will once again build super talls like the Tower of the Americas or Tower Life building that were considered record breaking for their height back in those days.
BTW, I'm teasing about the 'suburb' comment but these discussions about S.A's lackluster amount of skyscrapers and that it looks much smaller relative to it's population has become pointless whether S.A. is a big city or not. Imo, S.A. can be seen as a juggernaut in many regards.
Random photo from the internet of a 10 story building. I feel buildings of this size do add to infill and density and are also impressive as a lofty skyscraper.
https://neo-trans.blogspot.com/2021/...s-may-see.html
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, but it does feel like both areas are becoming one.
