My new apartment is up on the 16th floor, which gives me a fine view of downtown Saigon:
The first thing I noticed: no skyscrapers to speak of. I'm living in one of the tallest buildings in the city and it's only 17 floors high. THE tallest building is the Saigon Trade Center and that reaches 33 stories tall and is still shorter than the Washington Monument.
Saigon is a city of about 7 million people and the amount of available space is rapidly declining. Logically the only place to go is up, but development of high-rises and other tall buildings has been very slow.
Why that is I couldn't really say; it may have something to do with inflation or the very high cost of real estate.
1 comment:
No tall buildings may be more a result of geology than economics. I don't know what the underlying subsoil is in Saigon, but there's a reason New York is full of skyscrapers and London is not, and it has to do with the fact that Manhattan rests on granite whereas London rests of softer soil. If land is scarce and expensive, it would actually argue for more skyscrapers, not fewer.
Post a Comment