I remember in elementary school how the start of every school year was marked by a moment of silence for the victims and fallen heroes of 9/11. But following the 10 year anniversary of this painful day, slowly, our school wouldn’t hold a moment of silence, and conversations about 9/11 would be less common each year. Rather, there would be a few Instagram posts and Snapchat stories of the tribute lights in New York — and even those were becoming increasingly irregular.

While I have always had a certain curiosity about 9/11 being a native New Yorker, I, just like many others, began to forget its impact. This is easy to do when you only know a world that is post-9/11 — and when your generation never carried the same weight of generational trauma attached to the day. 

However, not all of us are as privileged to lead our regular lives as this day nears. Just this past winter, my mom attended a funeral for a firefighter that died due to 9/11-related brain cancer so many years later. For many, today is heart wrenching.

2,996 people died on 9/11, making it the deadliest terrorist attack in history. Although this singular day was full of grief and changed the way we saw the world, over the last 20 years, the number of deaths among survivors and responders, who spent months breathing in dust, debris and chemicals, is in the thousands. Researchers found that over 60 different types of cancers and many other conditions have been linked to Ground Zero exposure. In a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control, 4,627 responders and survivors enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program have died.

Moshe Shapiro, researcher at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, reflected on the ongoing effect of 9/11 by saying: “With the 20th anniversary of 9/11 approaching, it is impossible not to reflect on how the World Trade Center attacks continue to exert a painful human toll.”

The long-standing human toll is impossible to ignore. As a result, the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund (VCF) was created by the Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act to compensate the victims of the attack and their families. Anyone present at the World Trade Center or the New York City Exposure Zone, the Pentagon crash site or the Pennsylvania crash site, between September 11, 2001 to May 30, 2002, and has been diagnosed with a 9/11-related illness, is eligible for compensation. The fund was given nearly $7.4 billion to distribute, minus operational and administrative costs. 

In 2019, the VCF made headlines as Congress fought over continuing to offer benefits to the families of the victims. Most famously, Jon Stewart, former host of The Daily Show, and fierce advocate for the VCF, shamed absent members of Congress for disrespecting the first responders of 9/11 who sacrificed their lives. 

“And you should be ashamed of yourselves for those that aren’t here,” Stewart said. “But you won’t be, because accountability doesn’t appear to be something that occurs in this chamber.”

Thankfully, after a hard-fought battle, the bill authorized $10.2 billion more for the next 10 years, and will give additional billions until 2090. This was a significant win for the first responders and their families who have been urging Congress for a permanent fund for over a decade. And as we commemorate the 20th anniversary of 9/11, and as more victims die, having this fund available is crucial.

This anniversary has affected me more than usual. The past four weeks, I have watched Kabul fall to the Taliban and American troops officially leave Afghanistan. Americans were told in 2001 that the war was to combat terrorism, to spread democracy and of course, to find and kill Osama bin Laden. While some of these missions were successful, and others evidently were not, there has been a consensus of disappointment throughout the United States. 

Truthfully, I am not exactly sure where I stand on these issues, but I do agree with President Biden when he says that, “the idea that somehow, there’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don’t know how that happens.” 

Regardless of your views on the tragedy of what happened in Afghanistan or what should happen, as we commemorate 9/11, it is important that we fully recognize the scope of how 9/11 forever changed our daily lives and disrupted the global order. 9/11 launched a campaign of xenophobic hatred and discrimination toward the Muslim community, caused massive refugee and migration consquences, and irrevocably changed U.S. attitudes toward intervention, state building and occupation in the name of “fighting terror.” But even on a smaller scale: from the airport security to the view of the Manhattan skyline, whether you spend today thinking about 9/11 or not, it affects us. 

I believe this 9/11 anniversary also affects me more because as New Yorkers we recently lived through a traumatic experience. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, 54,156 New Yorkers have died, and in the city, there were 33,968 deaths. In addition to the high death toll, the city that never sleeps came to a complete stop and the vibrancy and inspiration that makes living in a 500 square-foot apartment went away — for a bit. In the same way New Yorkers came together for 9/11, we came together to fight the pandemic. I hope we will continue to use the example of kinship that was exhibited on 9/11 and the following days to get through our current tragedy. 

In the spirit of humanity today, I encourage everyone to think about and stand with everyone who was affected by this day.

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Since the late 19th century, skyscrapers have been built out of necessity; growing populations and rising real estate values have coerced engineers to build up rather than out. The inception of steel framed buildings allowed for just that as the first skyscrapers formed in agglomeration in US cities like New York and Chicago. In the 21st century, current technological innovations and renewed economic pressures have led to an international surge in skyscraper construction.

According to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), there are currently 3,206 skyscrapers (defined as buildings over 150 m in height). Most of these are located in countries including China, the United States, Japan, the UAE, Australia and Canada. Of these, 2,103 have been built since 2000 and 2,595 have been built since 1990. That is to say that 80% of all skyscrapers in the 130-year history of tall buildings have been built in the last 25 years.

So where are these new buildings being built? We should first compare the year 1990 to the present. That year, the world leader in tall buildings was the United States, which had 438 of the world’s 611 skyscrapers. Next was China, with 37 (most of which were located in British-controlled Hong Kong), followed by Canada and Australia, which each had 20, and Japan with 19.

Today, the data is incontrovertibly different. China has taken the lead with 1,111 skyscrapers to the US’s 676. Australia, Canada and Japan have all more than quadrupled their skyscraper output while South Korea and the UAE, which barely made the map in 1990, are now major players. The UAE has 187, including the world’s tallest, while South Korea has erected 175. India, Indonesia and other emerging economies have followed similar, though less dramatic, trends. In the midst of these developments, European countries, which have long avoided heights, are also now constructing skyscrapers. For instance, the UK has gone from a single skyscraper in 1990 to 15 in 2014. France, Germany, Spain, Turkey and Russia have followed suit.

So why are these buildings being built? The answer is a mirror image of what occurred in the United States through the 19th and 20th centuries. China has seen its GDP rise from $3.6 billion in 1990 to over $10 trillion in 2014 with parallel increases in property values and urban population. The resultant economic pressure in urban areas coupled with the same ambition that built the Empire State Building has driven engineers in less developed countries upwards.

Meanwhile, in European cities such as London and Paris, places long subject to height restrictions for safety or aesthetic purposes, regulators are changing their attitudes. Development in London’s Square Mile and Canary Wharf districts has been fueled by record property values and population growth. France’s La Défense, located on the fringe of Paris’s city limits, has propped up ten new skyscrapers since the 1980s in an attempt to be business friendly. Moscow’s International Business Center, which hosts nearly a dozen new skyscrapers as well, was conceived for similar reasons. Throughout Europe, the construction of skyscrapers seems increasingly seen as a useful economic tool.

In the Middle East however, skyscrapers serve as elaborate displays of wealth. Grandiose hotels and office buildings, such as the Abraj Al Bait in Mecca or the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, serve to exemplify this point. Saudi Arabia is now moving forward with what will become the world’s new tallest building, the kilometer-high Kingdom Tower in Jeddah. These major projects, typically designed by western architecture and engineering firms such as Adrian Smith, SOM, or Thornton Tomasetti, not only serve their symbolic purposes, but are also intended to transform oil dependent economies into centers of finance and tourism. These efforts, however, can reach the point where they defy economic principle. In Dubai, vacancy rates loom over many of the cities newest skyscrapers.

It’s easy to wonder why the United States, which leads the world in skyscraper construction through the 1990s, hasn’t been keeping up with many of its international counterparts. But in the US, the demand for new skyscrapers simply isn’t there. Countless cities throughout the United States already posses sufficient quantities of office space for their employment levels and many companies have turned to more efficient space usage as an alternative to new construction projects. Another factor lies in the location of US companies, which are relatively rural or suburban. About a third of the US’s largest companies are found in suburban or rural areas and an international comparison (see headquarter locations here) would surely reveal that US companies are less urban than firms abroad. 70% of current construction projects in the United States are underway in technology hubs such as the New York, San Francisco and Dallas metropolitan areas and in only New York is there really a skyscraper construction boom. Aside from these areas, you can expect little change in the skylines of most American cities.

While the construction of supertall structures may be limited domestically, by 2020 over 900 new skyscrapers will be built internationally. Though more than half of these will be found in China, countless other nations will see dramatic changes in their own urban heights. Countries like Russia will witness their skylines double in size while formerly docile countries like Azerbaijan plan their own megatall buildings and European cities adapt their historic reputations. These factors are all indicative of the globalization-fueled trend of building upwards, which will certainly continue for at least the next two decades.

The views expressed by these authors do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors, or governors.

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