Page 47 - Vertical City
P. 47
RECONCILING HIGH-RISE LIVING AND THE SUN 47
it complicated to accept high-rise towers, the city had to
reconcile to them in order to preserve its financial acti-
vity, thus creating a new debate as to their integration in
the midst of a dense historical environment.
Rotterdam and Amsterdam followed in their foots-
teps, and in every European metropolis neighborhoods
of high-rise towers are being built, thus catching up lately
with a global movement. If business districts bloomed in
American cities, it is in Hong Kong that the first vertical
districts and even vertical cities, saw the light of day in
1950. They still challenge the imagination.
The heart of the great south-American metropoles,
such as Buenos Aires or Rio de Janeiro began to shoot
upward from the 1970s. But it is in the Middle East,
particularly in Dubai, and in Asia, in Jakarta and Kuala
Lumpur and everywhere in Chinese metropoles that
this enthusiasm has taken over.
