Name: The Invisible Symbol in New York's Skyline
Uploaded: 2021-04-26T01:44:52.000Z
Duration: 8 min 5 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

flock to New York City's Madison Square Park

some of the world's most famous buildings.

But even native New Yorkers probably missed

one of the most interesting stories in the city's skyline,

located here, and that's because most of it doesn't exist.

During the major economic expansion of New York City,

in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,

demand and prices for prime real estate in Manhattan soared.

developers could suddenly build vertically

Skyscrapers, as these mega-projects were called,

started popping up in the priciest parts of the city,

alongside its existing landmark headquarters on 24th Street.

the tallest building in the world at the time,

incorporating the distinctive setback look

during the same week of the plans being announced

and the beginning of the Great Depression.

With funding scaled back the grand design,

much like the decade of excess in which it was conceived,

Eventually topping out at barely a 1/3 of the height

of the previous design, leaving behind a stump

that some might say is a monument to economic hubris.

Fast forward to today and New York City skyline

Many nearing completion, as the global economy sputters.

Some economists insist the timing of these skyscraper booms

and economic downturns is more than just a coincidence.

I applied an economic model called the skyscraper index

of the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai,

meant that a global financial crisis was coming.

The model he used is based on an idea proposed in 1999

by a real estate analyst named Andrew Lawrence.

He looked at all the records setting skyscrapers

beginning with the Singer Building in New York City

and the Empire State Building setting records consecutively.

And then you fast forward until you get to 1970,

when World Trade Tower one, World Trade Tower two,

and the Sears building all set new records.

we had the long stagflation of the 1970s.

new record-setting skyscrapers in the late 1990s,

and early 2000s, and of course, right in the middle of that

But we're gonna see is that there's going to be

this cluster of areas where companies have to cut back,

We're certainly not looking forward to it

It's an example of what I call broken clockism. Okay?

If you're looking to pair a skyscraper boom

because the downturns are happening all the time.

"of the skyscraper cycle. Oh, here's the business cycle.

"Oh, yeah, they must be connected in some way."

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The Invisible Symbol in New York's Skyline

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