The US Cities with the Most Active Tower Cranes

tower cranes

For the third year in a row, Seattle, Washington has the most construction cranes in their city’s skyline, a clear sign that the west coast city is still in a major growth period. Around Christmas 2016, the first year Seattle lead the most cranes race, the city put on an awesome lights show and shared an impressive video of the cranes lighting up the skyline, which you can watch here.

After a dip in crane activity in Late 2017 and early 2018, Seattle is currently sitting at 65 active tower cranes across the city.  27 of those cranes are being used for mixed-use buildings, 17 more for residential, and 11 are for offices, according to the Seattle Times.

Trailing behind them in second place is Chicago, with 40 cranes, followed by Los Angeles with 36 cranes, and Portland, Oregon in fourth place with 30.  In the previous crane count at the beginning of the year, Denver was in 4th place with 36 cranes.

Even though Seattle may currently have the most cranes in the United States, that number is paled in comparison to Toronto, Canada, who currently leads North America with 97 cranes. In Australia, Sydney currently has 346 cranes, but it’s still not the city with the most in the world. One project in Istanbul, which will be the world’s largest airport, when complete, had 58 cranes on site at a single point in 2016.

Dubai, masters of supertall buildings and other over-the-top structures, currently has a whopping 1,182 active cranes around its city, making it the world leader.   The city in the UAE is currently preparing for Dubai 2020 festival and one of the main features will be the Dubai Creek Tower, which is promised to be world’s tallest building when topped out.

Full story: Seattle tops the nation in tower cranes for third straight year as construction reaches new peak | The Seattle Times

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