Nate Berg in Los Angeles
theguardian.com, Friday, 14 February, 2014
There’s a very special hole in the ground in downtown Los Angeles. It’s the site of the future Wilshire Grand, a 73-storey building filled with offices, retail and hotel rooms that will, when it opens in 2017, be the tallest building in the city, and the eighth tallest in the country. The project – a $1.1bn (£660m) investment – will be the first major skyscraper built in the city in more than 20 years.
It’s a time span that’s seen the global footprint of cities expand dramatically. Hyperspeed development in places like China and the Middle East have turned practically empty land into instant city skylines boasting the tallest buildings in the world. Long an American pastime, building skyscrapers has become a global game – and LA has largely been out of it. More…