China’s Sky City Not An Immediate Threat To Burj Khalifa

The Chinese government has halted the construction of its 208-floor, 838 metres-tall Sky City tower, according to local media reports.

Sky City was touted to become the world’s new tallest building, with an ambitious completion plan of just nine months. Dubai currently holds the world record with its Burj Khalifa tower, which took around five years to be completed and has a height of 829.8 metres.

Earlier this week, the Sky City developer and Changsha-based construction company Broad Sustainable Building broke ground with the project.

However, the company reportedly failed to alert the relevant authorities of the commencement of the project, which meant construction was called to a halt immediately.

Authorities have issued a notice to Broad Group asking the firm to complete the requisite administrative procedures for a permit before resuming construction.

The company’s founder Zhang Yue also grabbed the limelight last year when he built a prefabricated 30-storey hotel in 15 days.

Speaking at the ground-breaking ceremony earlier this week, Yue explained that the tower will be built from prefabricated steel and concrete modules and will rise to 208 stories – ten storeys higher than the Burj Khalifa. Sky City will also have six underground floors.

The Chinese tower will include malls, residences, schools, a hotel, a hospital and a vertical garden. It will also be capable of sustaining an earthquake measuring a magnitude of 9 on the richter scale.

All these developments will require roughly $850 billion and a time frame of just nine months.

According to research group Emporis, China already has three of the world’s tallest towers while there are plans to build many more in the coming years.

Some of the recently announced projects include Shanghai Tower (632 metres), the Golden Finance 117 in Tianjin (597 metres), Ping An Finance Centre in Shenzhen (660 metres), and the Greenland Center in Wuhan (636 metres). All of the towers will be completed between 2014 and 2017.

Since Burj Khalifa’s grand opening in 2009, countries such as Saudi Arabia and the US have announced plans to construct the world’s tallest tower in order to beat Dubai’s world record.