Sky-high building boom sprouts in China

"With roughly 250 million people set to move into Chinese cities in the next decade or so, the pace of urban construction－including road, rail and water infrastructure, and cultural institutions, in addition to tall buildings－has outstripped any previous period in human history," the tall-buildings council said in a report. The full report will be released when the council holds its annual congress in China in September.

The skyscraper build-out comes as Chinese leaders grapple with the best way to construct cities and accommodate that swelling urban population. The National Development and Reform Commission is studying a plan to improve city planning by limiting sprawl, China Business News reported on Thursday.

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A jewel in Suzhou's crown

China's skyscrapers are no guarantee that the surge in property values will continue. New home prices fell in 55 of 70 cities in June, according to government data. High-rise manias in New York, Kuala Lumpur and Dubai all preceded economic slumps.

The planned Sky City skyscraper in central Changsha may become a symbol of the bursting property bubble as well as the skyscraper boom. Broad Group, an air-conditioner maker, once promised to erect the 838-meter building in less than a year－by April 2014. As yet, the site is sprouting only watermelons.

"China will get to the point where economic reality－whether that's on the level of a single developer, local government or the central government－will become a big factor that overtakes ambition," Wood said.

Still, Suzhou may find comfort in a 2011 study by three American university professors, Skyscraper Height and the Business Cycle, which found no support for the so-called Skyscraper Index－the theory that the most intense competition for the tallest towers occurs just before a business downturn.

There is no sign yet that ambitions have been crimped by a weaker property market or projections of slower economic growth. A plan announced last month by the United Kingdom firm Chetwoods Architects would take on Jiddah's Kingdom mega-skyscraper with a development in Wuhan featuring a pair of towers.

Wuhan is a transportation hub in central China in the midst of its own real-estate frenzy. Last month, ECA International, a consulting company, ranked the city Asia's 29th most expensive for expatriates, beating Mumbai and Kuala Lumpur. Wuhan is already planning a tower of more than 600 meters under construction by China's Greenland Group.

"Humanity has the ambition to do what it can't do; part of that is to build the tallest buildings," Wood said. "Many of the iconic towers now rising in China have lent world recognition to cities that relatively few Chinese－let alone Westerners－were previously aware of."