Tall buildings and Recession.

Building the tallest structure immediately puts pressure on building an adequately strong foundation, ventilation, heating, cooling, lighting, transportation (elevators, stairs, parking), communication, electrical power, plumbing, wind resistance, fire protection, and building security. There is also an increase in employment density brought about by tall structures, transportation congestion and environmental concerns.

But does the tallest building also puts pressure on the economy?

The Burj Dubai renamed the Burj Khalifa was launched yesterday. The opening coincided with the present economic slump.

At any given time there is an unholy nexus between the construction and opening of the world’s tallest building and economic downturn. Maybe this is a coincidence or maybe it real does affect business cycles. Maybe the tall building challenges us at every level. When land prices rises, the building grows taller. Or maybe it the other way round – when building grows taller, the land price rises. Maybe tall buildings predict economic collapse or maybe economic collapses give rise to tall building.[Now I am really confused}

It’s the chicken and egg conundrum.

There seem to be a link in construction boom and economic collapse. The investor starts speculations, over-investing and expanding the money base (you can also read this as greed). A tallest building project is announced and the construction begins in the late phases of the economic/ realty boom period, when the economy is growing and the unemployment is low with the stock market booming and there is easy availability of credit and fund.

And as all business cycles there is a sharp downturn in the financial market which leads to recession and higher unemployment. The project is then completed in the early stages of the recession period or if the recession period is long then the project is either delayed or scraped.

When the boom period goes up, rationality goes down.

People don’t ask for the value of the land but pay as per the ‘market rate’. Everybody speculates and wants to make a quick profit. There is hysteria all around. The recession period cycles are so long in between that people forget the lessons learnt during the last economic downturn and so they do not apply rationality when the next turmoil takes place.

Stop hogging you greedy fellow_