Tall Buildings

After reading about some monstrosity they want to build in Saudi Arabia, I got curious as to how quickly the world's tallest buildings rise in height, similar to how the Top 500 keeps track of how much faster computers are getting. I got data from Emporis about the current tallest buildings in the world and then figured out what would have been the tallest buildings in previous years by removing newer buildings. The WTC Towers were the only ones I had to look up to add to the data for years prior to 2001 as demolishing skyscrapers is kind of rare.

I took the top 30 from each year and averaged their heights. I picked 30 somewhat arbitrarily as it was a small enough number that most likely 30 of them were from long enough ago to give me plenty of years to work with. I was able to go back to 1984 before the list dropped below 30, meaning of the current top 200, less than 30 were built before 1984. It is also a large enough number that I hoped the annual change in heights would be steady.



The data shows that the average height increases by 3.5 meters, or 11.5 feet, annually. This is a rather steady increase with only 2010 being an outlier due to the completion of the Burj Khalifa. Currently the average height is 405 meters (1328 ft), 24 meters taller than the Empire State Building, and slightly shorter than Trumps new building in Chicago.

Projections (year, average height, current building closest to that height)
2015 - 423 meters - Jin Mao Tower
2020 - 441 meters - Sears Tower
2025 - 458 meters - Petronas Towers
2035 - 494 meters - Shanghai World Financial Center
2040 - 511 meters - Taipei 101
...
2130 - 830 meters - Burj Khalifa
2178 - 1 kilometer - none