Skyline

For other uses, see Skyline (disambiguation).

A skyline is the overall or partial view of a city's tall buildings and structures consisting of many skyscrapers in front of the sky in the background. It can also be described as the artificial horizon that a city's overall structure creates. Skylines serve as a kind of fingerprint of a city, as no two skylines are alike. For this reason news and sports programs, television shows, and movies often display the skyline of a city to set location. The Sky Line of New York City was a new term in 1896, when it was the title of a color lithograph by Charles Graham for the color supplement of the New-York Journal.^[1]

The skyline of Hong Kong

Paul D. Spreiregen, FAIA, has called a skyline "a physical representation [of a city's] facts of life ... a potential work of art ... its collective vista."^[2]

In general, larger cities have broader and taller skylines, though lower density cities often have smaller skylines than expected for city size.^{[citation needed]} Taller buildings are found where either land value or desire for visibility is higher, and the tallest buildings in a city are usually office buildings.^{[citation needed]} Because of this, the skyline of a city can be seen as symbolic of the city's influence and economy.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Cityscape
• List of cities with most skyscrapers

References

1. ^ New York Public Library: "Moving Uptown": "When Charles Graham's view of New York was published, the new term used in the title, "sky line," caught on immediately."
2. ^ Paul D. Spreiregen (1965). Urban Design: The Architecture of Towns and Cities. McGraw-Hill. http://books.google.com/books?id=6zYFAAAAMAAJ. 

External links

• Di Serio's top 15 Skylines
• The Skyline Project has a collection of skyline photographs from across the United States.
• The World's Best Skylines calculates ranking by height and breadth of skylines.
• All About Skyscrapers
• Tallest Cities of the World calculated ranking strictly by height.
• Emporis ranking of cities by the visual impact of their skylines
• Skyline on m-w.com
• Skyline Whitespace Exhibitions