Construction Halted on World’s Tallest Building Project in Changsha

Within one week from the ground breaking ceremony for Sky City, the 838-metre skyscraper project in Changsha, the building that would have been the tallest in the world has been put on hold.

A report in the Changsha-based Xiaoxiang Morning Herald indicates that Sky City has been halted because the construction company had not completeld all of the necessary procedures for undertaking the RMB 9 billion, 220-storey structure.

Sources associated with the work stoppage apparently told the newspaper that the developer, Broad Sustainable Building, had never applied for governmental approval for the project, citing in particular the need for examination of the building’s safety and environmental impact.

Earlier, the official newspaper the of the Communist party, The People’s Daily, had criticised the project on its Weibo feed as a display of “blind worship for ultrahigh skyscrapers.”

However, in a statement to the AFP news service, a spokeperson for Broad indicated that the company had received all necessary approvals for the project already.

A report earlier this week in Mingtiandi detailed some of the many challenges facing this ambitious project including the ambitious nine month construction schedule, the relative inexperience of the developer, and the questionable economics of building the world’s tallest skyscraper in a market as undeveloped as Changsha.

Among other concerns, observers have questioned the ability of the structure to stand up to the enormous cross winds that such a large structure would face, the ability to evacuate the building in case of emergency, and the startingly low cost estimates for the building’s construction.

It’s most likely that although the project could never have broken ground without some sort of local government approval (and some reports indicate that it was the local government that was pushing the developer to make the project the tallest in the world), that the widespread criticism of the project had brought pressure from higher level authorities onto the local government to start making sense.

For now, it appears that the developer will have the opportunity to document the feasibility of the project in greater detail while the cattle currently occupying Sky City’s neighborhood may have a few more months available for grazing time.