The Mile-High Skyscraper: Why Ambition Alone Doesn’t Build Great Buildings
Every so often, a bold idea resurfaces in architecture and engineering circles: Could humanity build a skyscraper one mile tall?
The short answer is yes. But the longer, more important answer is that it probably shouldn’t.
Watching a recent breakdown of the engineering behind this concept, I found myself thinking less about height and more about how this applies to commercial real estate leaders - especially those responsible for the day-to-day reality of operating complex buildings.
A mile-high skyscraper is an incredible intellectual exercise. It’s inspiring, imaginative, and pushes the limits of what’s possible. But it also exposes a pattern that shows up across CRE far more often than most people admit:
Technical capability and strategic wisdom are not the same thing.
More Height, Less Usability
The most surprising part of the analysis wasn’t that a mile-tall tower could stand. It was how quickly the value begins to fall apart once you move past the romance of the idea.
As a building grows taller, the percentage of usable, leasable space shrinks. Structural reinforcement consumes entire portions of the floorplate. Mechanical systems demand more space. Elevator shafts multiply and eat into rentable area. The higher you go, the less efficient the building becomes.
Eventually, the tower becomes a monument to engineering rather than a functional asset. It’s a brilliant achievement, but a questionable investment.
In commercial real estate, that dynamic is familiar. We see it in projects that chase spectacle over utility, in developments that prioritize headline-grabbing features over long-term serviceability, and in amenities that impress at ribbon-cutting ceremonies but struggle to justify their ongoing operational cost.
The Hidden Complexity of Outlier Buildings
What fascinates engineers about ultra-tall buildings is often what frustrates the people who eventually have to operate them.
A tower stretching a mile into the sky would require entire new categories of elevators, mechanical distribution strategies, unprecedented fire and life-safety systems, and a highly specialized operations team with skills more akin to aerospace work than facilities management.
Every system becomes more complicated. Every maintenance task becomes more expensive. Every emergency becomes more consequential.
And that brings us to a hard truth most glossy development proposals never emphasize:
The more complex the building, the more fragile the operations.
This is where property managers and operators earn their reputation. It’s easy to design something exciting on paper; it’s much harder to run it well for decades, under pressure, through staffing changes, equipment and system life cycles, and evolving tenant needs.
What Ambition Gets Wrong Without Alignment
Ambition is not the enemy. The commercial real estate industry needs visionaries. But the mile-high skyscraper idea exposes a deeper leadership question:
Ambition toward what?
Height alone is not a strategy. Neither is size, or amenities, or architectural flair.
The buildings that stand the test of time, the ones that age gracefully, attract long-term tenants, and become part of a city’s identity - are the ones designed with clarity. They balance vision with practicality. They take the total lifecycle seriously. They respect the people who will ultimately steward the asset.
In short, they are aligned.
A mile-high tower, despite its brilliance, begins to drift away from the core purpose of a building: to serve people, support businesses, and operate dependably. Once form overtakes function, the foundation of value begins to erode.
Where CRE Leaders Should Focus Instead
The lesson isn’t to avoid ambitious ideas. It’s to direct ambition where it actually multiplies value.
The next decade of CRE will reward leaders who prioritize:
Buildings that are efficient and resilient.
Systems that reduce friction instead of adding complexity.
Infrastructure that can be maintained reliably, not just built impressively.
Investments that balance innovation with long-term operational clarity.
A mile-high skyscraper makes for an incredible rendering, but not an asset that performs well over a 50-year horizon. The difference between possibility and wisdom is where great operators earn their influence.
The Real Insight Behind the Extreme
Thinking about a one-mile tower isn’t really about skyscrapers. It’s about discipline.
It’s about resisting the temptation to equate “bigger” with “better.” It’s about evaluating projects not by how impressive they appear but by how well they will function years after the ribbon cutting. And it’s about remembering that the best buildings, the ones that produce the most stable returns - win through operations, not spectacle.
The mile-high skyscraper might exist in the future, but the lesson it will teach the industry will be timeless.
Excellence in commercial real estate has never been about how high you can build. It’s about how well you can build something that lasts.
Why A Mile-High Skyscraper Is Almost Impossible | The Limit: https://youtu.be/9DaEmvKWsEA
