The Economist about skyscrapers: The skyscraper boom: Better than flying, it's a good overview of the most important question related to that in architecture+economics (innovation in terms of material, models, construction), as well as how technologies allowed it. Of course, to me, they discuss intriguing question related to new sort of places that emerge from this kind of buildings:

engineers also have to work out how to get people to the top floors. (...) Most tall towers now have at least two banks of lifts: one for the lower floors and one for the upper ones. In the tallest towers in Asia (home to eight of the world's ten highest giants) this still means waiting too long. So engineers run two or more lifts in each lift shaft, and build “sky lobbies” where passengers cross between lifts if they want to go the whole way down or up. (...) These arrangements, whereby cappuccino-carrying office workers or hotel porters are directed to a particular lift according to where they want to go, are collectively known as “hall call”. KONE, a Finnish lift company, is working on a lift system that sends text messages to people's mobile phones as they enter a building, informing them to take lift five, say, if they want to go to their desk or lift seven if they want the café on the 60th floor.

Why do I blog this? It reminds me an eTech presentation about "software for skyscrapers". Apart from that, this is related to my interest towards how technology can lead to news sort of places.