Residential buildings in my country are very short but are too many and make up an entire village. Why not save precious space, foundation materials and costs by building a much taller residential skyscraper?
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The taller the building the deeper (and more expensive) the foundations, as it needs to hold up more weight.
The type of soil also affects how high a building can go.
Also, in a lot of countries there are rules about how many floors you can have without lifts (eg in HK, you can have stairs if there are 5 floors, but 6 and over needs to have lifts). This makes it more expensive to build and maintain.
Depends on the location too. If you are in an area with lots of space and not enough population (American suburbs), people won’t be interested in condos when for not that much more expensive you get a frontyard and backyard.
There are calculus to be done between:
– population density
– price of condo
– price of house
– cost of building an apartment
– cost of building a house
– maintenance cost (for apartment)
– time to sell / rent out
– profit over time
Another reason, not yet mentioned is landscape/cityscape considerations, basically for aesthetic reasons. (Though this might not be applicable to your case)
In certain places, for example a historical city, where most houses are historic and 3stories high max and in the city skyline you only see a few church towers/bell towers etc stick out. You might not be allowed to build a 7story high modern apartment building. Because it disrupts the skyline and the historical feel of the city. These types of buildings might be accepted more in the outskirts of the city.
Building taller involved tradeoffs and various considerations. In many places elevators aren’t required if you have few floors so taller building would require an elevator. What about parking? You have to provide more but you have less space so maybe an underground garage which adds difficulty. Water drainage if you are building underground is an issue. So is pumping water to the upper floors. There are many things to consider.
The cost per sqft increases exponentially with height. Building high only makes sense when land prices are incredibly high (or when you have a small penis and want to compensate).
Building beyond a few floors gets a lot more expensive than several shorter buildings, both to build and to maintain. You gotta lift all the construction materials and workers, you gotta make foundations and lower walls a lot stronger, you need more floor space for stairs and elevators. You need extra pumps for water, and wastewater pipes need “steps” because a poop that falls down 20 floors can do some real damage.
Once the building is made, you need more energy to run the elevators and to pump water up.
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