Saudi Arabia Constructing World's Tallest Building

kkleiner writes "1,000 meters, or 3,280 feet. That's two-thirds of a mile. When the Kingdom Tower is built on the outskirts of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia it will not only become the tallest building in the world, it will shatter the old record. The total cost for the tower is approximately $1.2 billion. It features a Four Seasons hotel, Four Seasons serviced apartments, luxury condominiums, top class office space and the world's highest observatory."

Re:HOOOOLY SHIT

[GameboyRMH]

Ah I see. Looks like they did their graphic wrong.

I was searching to double-check the height and it was originally planned to be 1 mile tall but they had to scale back, so I guess the graphic was based on the original height.

Re:HOOOOLY SHIT

[uigrad_2000]

Look at the graphic again. It clearly lists the Burj Khalifa as 512m.

GameboyRMH's statement is purely accurate. According to the "graphic", it is nearly twice as tall.

Of course, the next next to the graphic lists the Burj Khalifa as 828m, which is the correct value.

The whole article is badly written, IMO.

Re:How many hungry people could be fed instead?

[bmo]

Protip:

The causes of famine are politics first, logistics second, and lack of actual food last. It's been this way for a long time. If you have warlords refusing NGOs like UNICEF, then the problem isn't spending money on a building a thousand miles away. There is plenty of food to go around. The problem is getting it there.

--
BMO

Re:Our Engineers and Architects

[timeOday]

The question you should be asking is, why are Americans still so much better off than almost all of the nations you listed when they stomp us on every standardized test imaginable? You listed the surprising example of Japan, which peaked over 20 years ago! They're an intelligent, well-organized nation that seemed to have a miraculous economy for a decade or two until all the other Asian tigers started to catch up with them, because there was nothing about their industry that couldn't be replicated elsewhere. You think the US feels threatened by China, just consider Japan, and their similar-but-far-larger neighbor next door! Look at US exports to China [blogspot.com], and what a large - and growing - proportion of that is "crude materials." If we were a resource-poor nation that wedge would be gone. Now look at our huge agricultural exports [blogspot.com], and how many of the nations you listed aren't even self-sufficient in basic foodstuffs! Sure, high-tech farming helps, but you still need land and water. Now consider US law and politics, which were founded on egalitarian, agrarian society. This was possible because there was enough land for everybody to be a landowner, in contrast with Europe where everything was already owned by somebody and wealth (and thus political power) had concentrated on land owners over the centuries. At the very least, you must concede that the height of US power - post WWII - was facilitated by not being destroyed in the war while our main economic competitors were, thanks largely to geography.