National Post (National Edition)
The CN Tower's ever-diminishing place in the new global order of mega skyscrapers
SOON TO BE 11TH
It reigned for more than 34 years and in the end, only the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building and the Great Pyramid of Giza can lay claim to having spent more time as the “world's tallest.”
But now, only 14 years after it was turfed from the top spot, the pending completion of new super-skyscrapers in Asia and the Middle East means that Toronto's CN Tower will not even rank among the top 10 of the world's tallest freestanding structures.
The Merdeka 118 is rising over Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, with a planned final height of 635 metres upon completion in 2022. Meanwhile, overlooking Saudi Arabia's second-largest city stands the incomplete shell of the eponymous Jeddah Tower which, if restarted, will eventually stretch to one kilometre in height.
With the completion of both buildings, Toronto's iconic tower would be bumped to the 11th spot on rankings of the world's tallest freestanding structures. The Lotte World Tower, a South Korean skyscraper with a mere 2.65 metres over the CN Tower, will occupy 10th place.
Since losing its Guinness-recognized “world's tallest” ranking to Dubai's Burj Khalifa in 2007, The CN Tower's prestige has been chipped away by the single greatest tall-building boom in human history. In 1977, the year of the CN Tower's opening, the world saw the completion of only three skyscrapers taller than 200 metres. By 2017, that number had skyrocketed to 144.
Booming Asian economies have been leading the skyscraper charge. Of the world's 20 tallest free-standing structures, 14 are in Asia. This explosion of new towers has been helped along by significant advances in highrise construction, most notably in climate control. Beyond the simple mechanics of building a stable and wind-resistant steel structure taller than 600 metres, mega-skyscrapers like the Burj Khalifa in Dubai could not have been practically heated or cooled with the technology available at the time of early skyscrapers such as the Empire State Building.
Given current trends, even the mega-skyscrapers of the early 21st century will start to seem puny in only a few decades. Researchers Jonathan Auerbach and Phyllis Wan have carefully tracked the growth of skyscrapers in relation to the densification of the world's cities, and in 2018 they released a paper predicting that by 2050, the world's skylines would count at least 41,000 skyscrapers taller than 150 metres, and possibly at least one that reached a mile high.
Unfortunately, it seems unlikely Canada that will ever again be able to come close to being the “world's tallest.” Across the board, North America's showing in the tall buildings category has plummeted in recent decades, with New York City's One World Trade Center often serving as the only U.S. entry in tall building rankings.
The CN Tower's capture of the “world's tallest free-standing structure” title in 1977 was kind of an accident to begin with; contractors had been trying to solve a persistent regional problem with television reception, and in planning it soon emerged that the tower's unique slipform mold construction could be raised to a record-breaking 553 metres for relatively little money.
With the CN Tower carrying a price tag of $63 million, that works out to about $250 million in 2021 dollars. For context, the 604-metre Canton Tower in Guangzhou, China, was completed in 2010 at a cost of nearly $600 million. Notably, where record-breaking skyscrapers are often plagued by financial difficulties, the CN Tower was paid off in 15 years.