- Iconic skylines are one way to immediately identify some cities.
- Some looming skyscrapers haven’t stood the test of time, becoming abandoned or remaining incomplete.
- Cities must figure out what to do with the structures, and the cost of revitalization can be huge.
Towering skyscrapers often create a city’s iconic skyline, yet sometimes its tallest buildings can fall into disrepair or remain unfinished.
While abandoned structures can become symbolic of a location’s financial or social struggles, cities still have to decide what to do with them. Some are left to rust, others are demolished, and a few become revitalized.
In the mid-20th century, many older buildings in the US went under the wrecking ball. That’s not the best option from a sustainability standpoint, Shawn Ursini, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat’s (CTBUH) senior building database manager, told Business Insider.
“A lot of these buildings can still have a lot of life left in them,” he said. “We just maybe need to get a bit more creative as to what their purpose is going forward.”
He added that the CTBUH doesn’t have a designation for abandoned buildings since it doesn’t track buildings’ occupancy once they’re completed. However, the organization does keep tabs on the many buildings worldwide that are on hold.
“Generally speaking, when a project goes on hold, there is still an attempt to finish it,” Ursini said, although these attempts aren’t always successful.
Here are 10 of the tallest skyscrapers around the world that now sit empty or uncompleted — and how they ended up that way.
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