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CN Tower No Longer the Tallest

Posted by Graeme / September 13, 2007

8 Comments

CNTower130907.jpg Photo by blogTO flickr pooler Avninder.

Alas, poor Toronto. We're broke, transit fares are going up again, and our most recognizable icon is no longer the tallest free-standing structure in the world. We dressed you up like a high-class Manhattan call-girl with a zillion little LED lights, but we couldn't make you taller.

What really rankles is that the building that beat us isn't even done yet. The $4.1 billion dollar Burj Dubai won't be finished until 2009, and it still managed to surge past our humble tower on Wednesday. And just how spectacular is the Burj Dubai smackdown? The CN Tower is 553 metres tall, while the new, Dubai-based height champion will be 800 metres, a full 247 metres closer to space.

Of course, CN's status was as the world's tallest building was always controversial. It was definitely the world's tallest free-standing structure, and we were acknowledged by the Guiness Book of World Records as the tallest building as well. But the ever-snooty Council of Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat says a 'building' has to have businesses or people living in it, so the CN Tower didn't make the grade. Jerks.

Still, we had a good run. A 30 year record is unheard of, at least in the world of professional sports. The challenge now is to come up with something new, fresh and totally new millennium. We could be the city with the second largest free-standing structure that shoots a five hundred foot pillar of flame out the top. That would get Rochester's attention. But to make that happen, we'd probably have to raise TTC fares again.

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8 Comments

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Adam / September 13, 2007 at 01:13 pm
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They've got my tax dollars for the flame-pillar route.

Wow, 45% taller! It's going to be enormous.
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uSkyscraper / September 13, 2007 at 02:31 pm
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The Burj is insane. It's actually much more like the CN Tower and its tv-tower ilk, structurally speaking, than the steel-framed office buildings (WTC, Sears, Petronas, 101 Taipei) that have previously held the tall-building title. The thing is a giant tapering Y-shaped pillar of sloping high-strength concrete (sound familiar?), which makes it a completely useless floorplan for mainstream office space. However, Dubai may be the only place on earth at the moment where you have unlimited funding and an insatiable demand for foreign-buyer pied-a-terres, so most of the tower will be condos sitting on top of a hotel on the lower floors. The top part of the Burj was reserved by the sheikh to sell to his ego-driven wealthy friends as small offices. Economically, the tower will probably be a wreck (much as the Empire State Building was) but I don't think anyone in Dubai really minds. They wanted big, and they got it.

Meanwhile, Toronto and to a lesser extent North America is now stuck with buildings they can afford to build, which means at best 50-ish storey office buildings in T.O. and maybe a sprinkling of slightly taller condos for the forseeable future, and that may not be a bad thing at all. The best thing of all about the CN Tower may be how much better it looks today with all of the mature development around it, compared to the raw, naked and somewhat ugly surroundings in 1976. (Would love to see a before-and-after on BlogTO on that.) I'd rather have a mix of condos, parks, retail, sports and offices enhancing the tower rather than an empty field with an orange bridge (since relocated to Webers on Highway 11).
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chephy / September 13, 2007 at 04:07 pm
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But CN Tower DOES have businesses there! Don't restaurants count?
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Anastassia / September 13, 2007 at 11:46 pm
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Dubai is crazy... maybe they're trying to create the city withe the coolest buildings... I cannot beleive CN tower's record held up for that long.
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Joe / September 14, 2007 at 08:01 am
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That Burj Dubai tower is impressive! Now residents and tourists alike will have an unobstructed view of sand as far as the eye can see.
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Zach / September 14, 2007 at 08:52 am
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What if that thing caught on fire? How many people would be trapped? I see a giant hazard and not an achievement.
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uSkyscraper / September 14, 2007 at 09:57 am
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The Burj is extremely well engineered, being designed by the highly respected American firm SOM to American standards. It will have multiple stairs, safe zones and other fire protection components that were not present in the WTC. Whether it is attractively sited or economically useful sitting in its wasteland of sand, highways, kitchy towers-in-the-park and western-style sprawl is another matter, but no, it is not a hazard. It is simply raw ego.
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rek / September 14, 2007 at 07:24 pm
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Outside of space-starved locales, there's really no need for ultramegatall buildings anyway, so we may be 'stuck' with 50 storey towers but we don't need 'em any higher.
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