New Dubai Tower is Tallest Building in the World

I spent the weekend in New York City stuffing my face with all kinds of cuisines and braving 4-degree windchills. I also went up to the top of the Rockefeller Center and looked out at the glittering skyline, which is dominated by the red, white and green lights of the Empire State Building. Little did I know that across the globe, a tower twice as tall had risen in Dubai.

According to CNN, the metropolitan city in the United Arab Emirates officially opened the Burj Khalifa, a 168-story tower that now holds the title as the tallest building in the world. The structure, which cost $1.5 billion and took six years to build, is named after Khalifa Bin Zayed, the president of the United Arab Emirates — and ruler of Abu Dhabi, which recently bailed out debt-ridden Dubai to the tune of $10 billion.

The structure’s architects, Chicago-based Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, have called the Burj Khalifa “a bold global icon that will serve as a model for future urban centers.” The company has declared that ”tall buildings are back,” and predicts that the groundbreaking techniques it used should enable the construction of even taller towers in the future.

But are tall buildings a bad idea? Or at least not very green? ”It uses as much electricity as an entire city,” said Jim Krane, author of City of Gold: Dubai and the Dream of Capitalism. ”And every time the toilet is flushed they’ve got to pump water half a mile into the sky.”