The quote that caught my eye was “Many of the new towers that now dot the skyline are far bigger than any office buildings Tokyo had before. Improvements in building technology have allowed developers to put up taller buildings that are able to withstand Tokyo’s frequent earth quakes” in the Dec. 10th Wall Street Journal.

I was reading the story because the building boom in Tokyo has been obvious for three years. This past summer, my partner and I saw that many of the towers were open. Friends told us that occupancy was filling up the new class A buildings. There were two reasons given: (1) large congruent floor spaces appealed to big Japanese corporations, and (2) the class A quality appealed to global companies looking for new corporate headquarters for their Asian offices.

The comment about improvements in building technology is intriguing. The new buildings in Shanghai, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand are also gigantic. When are we going to get our giant buildings in the U.S.?

I know sentimental San Francisco is never going to go for two-block-wide sixty story towers, no matter how beautiful.