Yeah, but DC with skyscrapers is never going to look like that. First, DC is a much smaller city (only 600,000 or so people live in the city itself). And part of the reason NYC is so beautiful is because a lot of its skyscrapers are old. DC with skyscrapers would look like Baltimore or Minneapolis or something. Baltimore's fine, but the height limits ensure that DC looks unique and its skyline remains dominated by the Capitol and the Washington monument and the rest. The Virginia side of the Potomac doesn't have building height limits, and it's full of really ugly new office buildings and apartment high-rises. It's really, really awesome that you go pretty much anywhere in DC and still see the Washington monument on the horizon. If DC removes the building height limit, it would become a boring-looking midsize city; the shorter buildings contribute a lot to DC's unique culture and environment.
This is a really good (but long) article: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2012/11/urbanist-case-keeping-dcs-height-restrictions/3934/
I think it's pretty obviously bunk that good skylines have to have old buildings to be good skylines. Let's take a look at my
other city, Philadelphia:
All of the tall buildings here date from 1987 or later: before then there was a "gentleman's agreement" not to build higher than the top of the City Hall tower (which is still higher than DC's current onerous shortness, mind). They're pretty much all decent architecture, I think; and the city is immeasurably better off for their existence.
And, yes, Philadelphia is a
much better point of comparison than Baltimore or Minneapolis. Philly is the nation's sixth-largest metro area, Washington is seventh now (and growing more rapidly). And that's seventh
without adding Baltimore to get the CSA. DC only seems smaller to untrained eyes because its city boundaries are penned in pretty closely, a la Boston or San Francisco.
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