>>13492864Skyscrapers have this image of being a very efficient way of living, but they really aren't.
Getting people in and out is a pain in the ass and you need to waste tons of space for elevators.
Getting clean water in and sewage out is tricky and expensive due to hydrostatic pressure. The pumps and pressure relief valves you need for that are once again a waste of space and energy.
Every single pump and pressure relief valve is also a possible point of failure in the system.
Also most of these "biggest skyscraper known to man" projects often end up half empty because nobody wants to live there.
Most of these problems apply to tower arcologies just as much as they apply to skyscrapers. Also if that one large building fails for some reason (natural disaster, or just deterioration over time), then you'll have to replace the entire thing, which would be incredibly inconvenient. Compare that to a densely populated city, where you just regularly demolish old buildings and replace them with new ones, thus keeping the city as a whole alive and running.
If your goal is to contain mankind into dense centers of civilization, then you don't even need arcologies either. If you just copy-pasted manhattan, for example, you could fit 9 billion people into an area of about half the size of texas. Surely that's sufficient for your purposes?
Building ridiculously tall buildings is only done to flex on your fellow billionaire CEOs, it serves no practical purpose.
