Upper Limits? ~ Exploring Skyscraper Constraints

Paul at GeekPress spots Atlantic piece by Nick Berg asking Is There a Limit to How Tall Buildings Can Get?

"The responses [...] tend to focus on the pragmatic technicalities of dealing with funding and the real estate market or the lack of natural light in wide-based buildings. "The predominant problem is in the elevator and transportation system," says Adrian Smith, the architect behind the current tallest building in the world and the one that will soon outrank it, the kilometer-tall Kingdom Tower in Jeddah. [Structural engineer William Baker says] "We could easily do a kilometer. We could easily do a mile," he says. "We could do at least a mile and probably quite a bit more."