2017 Year in Numbers: Tall Trends and Records

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) has released its annual report, the 2017 Tall Building Year in Review, part of the Tall Buildings in Numbers data analysis series. The report shows that more buildings of 200 meters’ height or greater were completed in 2017 than in any other year, with a total of 144 completions, marking the fourth consecutive record-breaking year. That’s a remarkable almost-doubling from 2013, when only 74 buildings of more than 200 meters were completed. Notably, 2017 was also the most geographically diverse year in terms of the number of cities and countries that completed 200-meter-plus buildings, with 69 cities across 23 countries represented in the data, up from 54 cities across 18 countries in 2016. Twenty-eight of these cities and eight countries completed their tallest building.

Once again, China completed a majority of the 200-meter-plus buildings that finished in 2017, with 76 completions for 53 percent of the total. Although this is a slight decrease from 2016, when China completed 83 such buildings, or 65 percent of the global total, China is still by far the world leader in skyscraper construction. In fact, the city with the most 200-plus-meter building completions, Shenzhen, finished 12 buildings, or 8.3 percent of the year’s total – more than any other country on the list, except China. The United States completed the second-greatest number of 200-meter-plus buildings of any country, with 10 buildings finished in 2017.

The data from 2017 shows a continuation of the trend towards a greater global proliferation of skyscraper construction,” said CTBUH Executive Director Antony Wood. “High-rise construction is no longer confined to a select few financial and business centers, but rather is becoming the accepted global model for densification as more than one million people on our planet urbanize each week. Thirteen cities saw their first 200-meter-plus high-rise completion in 2017, in addition to the 28 cities and eight countries that saw their tallest building completed this year.

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Materials are courtesy of CTBUH