Sky to be scraped more slowly
It took two years and six weeks, from groundbreaking to ribbon-cutting, to build the Empire State Building.
For some reason, we seem to have forgotten how to do this sort of thing with any alacrity:
It looks like the time to build a big skyscraper in America is doubling every 35 years.
Another 70 years will be two more cycles of doubling, at which point the time to construct a skyscraper will — at the time construction starts — be 40 years … and will double ever 35 years.
A Bizarro version of Moore’s Law, to be sure. Are they building them from the top down or something?
Admittedly, it’s been more than 70 years since Oklahoma City’s Great Skyscraper Race, but I suspect we can come up with some speed if we have to: the 900-foot Devon Tower was started two months ago and is supposed to be finished in a mere 38 months.
