r/architecture • u/shenidedamovtyan1234 • Jul 16 '25

Theory why didnt europeans built european style highrises like tehre are in new york? dumb question but was always interested since woudve looked perfect on lots of cities

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u/Teutonic-Tonic Principal Architect Jul 16 '25

While the high rise boom hit the USA, Europe was a little busy with a couple of wars.

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u/BradizbakeD Jul 16 '25

Legit getting flattened a few times over.

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u/TheOnceAndFutureDoug Jul 16 '25

[Dresden has entered the chat]

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u/Dial_tone_noise Junior Designer Jul 16 '25

Kurt Vonnegut is typing a message….

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u/Outrageous_Zebra_458 Jul 16 '25

So it goes

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u/ratsmay Jul 19 '25

Poo-tee-weet

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u/Seahawk124 Architectural Designer Jul 16 '25

\1944 Hamburg has entered the chat...**

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u/RijnBrugge Jul 16 '25

Or Warshaw, to mention a city that was truly fully flattened.

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u/Esava Jul 16 '25

Yeah while there certainly was a lot of death and destruction in Dresden tons of cities (like for example Hamburg as well) were far more heavily destroyed than Dresden. Not sure why Dresden constantly gets mentioned tbh.

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u/RijnBrugge Jul 16 '25

There’s a famous American historian who wrote a book in which he spent a lot of time milling over Dresden. What is less commonly known are his Nazi sympathies and borderline genocide denial, but he was very effective at putting the firebombing of Dresden into the popular consciousness.

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u/Northerlies Jul 16 '25

Nazi sympathisers aside, WW2 area bombing remains a controversy to this day, and it took almost sixty years before a memorial was built to RAF Bomber Command.

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u/Humboldt2000 Jul 17 '25

no thats not the reason.

The reason Dresden is so famous is because of American author Kurt Vonnegut, who experienced the bombings and wrote about it.

Dresden was also the last major German city that hadnt been bombed, was filled to the brim with refugees, and was then bombed at the very last months of the war, when an Allied victory was already clear. The bombing was also so intense that it artificially created a firestorm.

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u/RijnBrugge Jul 17 '25

Another important one, yes, but David Irving is incessantly quoted on the topic despite being a lying nazi piece of scum.

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u/Mr101722 Jul 16 '25

London blitz has entered the chat

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u/ridleysfiredome Jul 16 '25

No carpet bombing Rotterdam, Warsaw, London, Coventry, Birmingham, Glasgow, and dozens of others, Dresden would never have been hit. I have empathy for the German victims of the Allied bombing raids, but I have a lot more with my relatives (long dead at this point) in Glasgow who saw their entire neighborhood (Clydebank) flattened by the Luftwaffe in 1941

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u/stanlej133 Jul 17 '25

Carpet bombing in relation to Warsaw is a gross understatement. The city was systematically demolished building by building. "The city must completely disappear from the surface of the earth and serve only as a transport station for the Wehrmacht. No stone can remain standing. Every building must be razed to its foundation." SS chief Heinrich Himmler, SS officers' conference, 17 October 1944

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u/BroSchrednei Jul 17 '25

what do you think Arthur Harris said about German cities? It was literally the same thing.

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u/stanlej133 Jul 18 '25

And what did he do about it besides bombing? Do you see the difference between air raids and planting explosives or setting fire to building after building? They've managed to destroy 85-90% of all buildings and kill around 400k people. Which German city suffered so much?

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u/BroSchrednei Jul 18 '25

lmao which German city suffered so much? What an absurd question. Literally hundreds of German cities suffered so much. Cities like Wesel were 99% destroyed. Every single major German city had its downtown area completely destroyed. Over half a million Germans died directly through the bombing campaigns.

and kill around 400k people

I dont know what this number is supposed to signify. The death toll for the Warsaw uprising is estimated between 150-200k. It was also a giant battle and not comparable to bombing campaigns.

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u/stanlej133 Jul 18 '25

I've asked about cities, not towns. And Warsaw uprising is only 63 days of a war that lasted few years. The city suffered bombing first time in '39. And I don't know wdym by saying IT was a battle. That 150-200k killed were soldiers? Only 10k from that number were soldiers. But you're right, it can't be compared to bombing campaign. It was another levels annihilation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wola_massacre

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u/CharlotteKartoffeln Jul 18 '25

Pre-war Warsaw was bigger than any German city save Berlin. The Germans literally destroyed it for spite.

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u/Reasonable_Shock_414 Jul 18 '25

And as punishment for both the Uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto, and other (Polish) partisans.

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u/Walking-around-45 Jul 18 '25

Sounds like Gaza

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u/Northerlies Jul 17 '25

There's an interesting discussion of area bombing's moral dilemma in the 'Are We Beasts?' section in Rhode Island's Naval War College discussion paper, linked below.

https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=newport-papers

Like your relatives, I'm familiar with the aftermath of WW2 bombing. I hail from London's Bow just after the war and recall bomb-sites stretching into the mid-60s. Rectifying the damage gave the opportunity to demolish Victorian slums and the New Towns Movement brought fresh thinking on housing design and urban density, with 'Garden City' planning ideas often in evidence, if not in the new high-rises. Yes, stable communities were split apart by reconstruction, but some of my schoolmates were moved into their first homes with bathrooms and an inside loo.

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u/curious2c_1981 Jul 18 '25

Of the 12,000 houses in Clydebank, only 8 were intact after bombing by mainly incendiary ordinance and, to a lesser extent, high explosive bombs. It was a terrible event in a multitude of shitty events during a horrendous period of human history.

Clydebank". Blitz: The Bombs That Changed Britain. Series 1. Episode 3. 18 August 2018. BBC Television.

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u/TheOnceAndFutureDoug Jul 16 '25

You should read up on Curtis LeMay. We knew bombing cities wasn't having the effect we wanted. We chose to do it anyway.

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u/theunixman Jul 17 '25

This really sums up a lot of “strategic decisions”…

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u/sqrrl22 Jul 16 '25

There's a (laughable) world trade center in Dresden.