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The Skyscraper Revolution:

Global Economic Development and Land Savings

Abstract

Tall buildings make up over 20% of real estate by value in the world’s largest cities. Nonetheless, many governments constrain tall building construction, hindering urbanization and growth. Quantification for all cities worldwide using a canonical land use model disciplined with reduced form elasticity estimates indicates that eliminating existing height constraints would generate a welfare gain of 3.7% in developing economies. Aggregate land values would decline by 3.9%, incentivizing landowners to support height restrictions. Estimated elasticities of city population and built area with respect to aggregate city building heights are 0.13 and -0.16, reinforcing the quantitative evidence that tall buildings facilitate urban growth and compactness. Interactions between static demand factors and the geography of bedrock isolate 1975-2015 tall building construction driven by technology-induced reductions in the cost of height. Using indirect inference, we estimate a (congestion) elasticity of consumer welfare to urban density of -0.11.

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