History Main / SkyscraperCity

** ''VideoGame/SonicRushSeries'': Night Carnival applies this theme to a city whose appearance is somewhere between [[CasinoPark Las Vegas]] and [[ItsAlwaysMardiGrasInNewOrleans New Orleans]].

* Emphasized in ''Anime/GhostInTheShell1995'', albeit with many skyscrapers looking [[UsedFuture somewhat dilapidated and unpleasant to live in]]. One famous scene focuses on showing the claustrophobic view of the skyscrapers from street level (including many skyscrapers under construction and covered with unsightly girders) while other scenes show it from above (the ground seemingly covered with brightly-lit roads and highways). [[SubvertedTrope Uniquely]], many of these tall structures look quite bulky and mass-produced rather than slim and sleek architectural masterpieces, possibly alluding to the budding industry of mass-produced ''artificial people''. Nevertheless, the city (presumably Tokyo, as per the Manga, or possibly Hong Kong) is shown to have some under-developed areas (e.g. the open-air marketplace) which would seem very familiar to anyone born/living in an East Asian city during the last century.

%%* ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'': Gotham City. Even more so in ''Film/TheDarkKnightTrilogy'' and especially in the posters.

%%* ''Film/BladeRunner'' appears to be set in that version of Los Angeles, although characters do drive their cars on the ground and Rick Deckard even gets a parking spot [[RockStarParking right in front of his house]].%%So is it an example or not?
* ''Film/TheFifthElement'': Manhattan's buildings are so high that its ground is seen only once when Korben flees from the Police. Other than that, the endless rows of flying cars make it look like a bottomless city.

* ''Film/{{Metropolis}}'' may be the TropeCodifier for visual fiction. The city in which the film takes place consists of pretty much nothing but skyscrapers and elevated freeways on the surface, dominated by the gargantuan Tower of Babel. The UndergroundCity where the workers live on the other hand, consists of nothing but shabby mid-rise apartments.

** {{Hive Cit|y}}ies are more accurately described as a kilometers-tall skyscraper the ''size'' of a city. They're said to be built in layers, with new levels being built on top of older ones, with the oldest even becoming buried by the weight of the buildings being added to the whole. In the hive cities these buried layers are generally where the outcasts live; mutants, psykers, heretics, xenos, and possibly even genestealer cults.

* ''VideoGame/ANNOMutationem'': Skopp and Noctis City consist of conglomerate superstructures that are interconnected with passerby commuter trains, and fully displayed {{Advert|OverloadedFuture}}s on most compositions.

* VideoGame/{{Ghostrunner}} has Darma tower, city size skyscraper and last refuge of humanity.

** The World That Never Was, an artificial world created by Xemnas from where he can slowly nurture his own Kingdom Hearts. While the Organization is nested in their floating castle, the rest of the world is littered in dark, hollow buildings and skyscrapers. The world's most iconic location is even called "Memory's Skyscraper."
** [[WesternAnimation/BigHero6 San Fransokyo]], which is... basically just a [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin combination of Tokyo and San Francisco.]] As expected, lots and lots of skyscrapers to be found here.

* ''VideoGame/TheMatrixPathOfNeo'' especially visible in the chase scene and finally levels that there are hardly any short buildings in the city.
* ''VideoGame/NinjaGaidenII2008'': The opening level, Sky City Tokyo, is exactly this. Your destination on the level is one of two twin towers... both built on top of an even bigger tower. Itself built several hundred meters above the ground. In the UpdatedRerelease Sigma II, you fight a [[GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere Buddha statue the size of the Statue of Liberty]] (which you ''also'' fight afterwards) at the end of the level: it looks puny compared to the building it climbs.
* ''Franchise/RatchetAndClank'' takes this and pretty much makes it its own VideogameSetting! Nearly every game in the series has one, and amazingly they all manage to feel different from each other, even the ones that appear in multiple games. In all examples, the ground is never seen and is treated as a BottomlessPit. Said levels include: Metropolis from ''[[VideoGame/RatchetAndClank2002 Ratchet & Clank]]'', ''[[VideoGame/RatchetAndClankUpYourArsenal Up Your Arsenal]]'', ''[[VideoGame/RatchetAndClankFutureToolsOfDestruction Tools of Destruction]]'', ''[[VideoGame/RatchetAndClankFullFrontalAssault Full Frontal Assault]]'' via DLC and the [[VideoGame/RatchetAndClank2016 2016 game]]/[[WesternAnimation/RatchetAndClank movie]] as Aleero City. It's easily the most well-known and iconic example in the series, and not just through repetition.

** ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehogCD': Stardust Speedway is a bottomless city in all time periods Sonic is present in, even when it resembled AncientGrome. The exception is the absolute bottom-most parts of the Ancient Grome time period, where water can be seen at ground level. All of these traits were kept for ''VideoGame/SonicMania''.

** ''VideoGame/SonicAdvanceSeries'': Ice Paradise Zone in ''Sonic Advance 2'' combines this setting with SlippySlideyIceWorld; it appears to be set in such a metropolis during a snowy winter. ''Sonic Advance 3'' opens with Route 99 Zone, which is the setting applied to a city with architecture resembling that of the mid-20th century United States.

* ''VisualNovel/UminekoWhenTheyCry'': Invoked in the last Episode with [[GreatBigLibraryOfEverything "the Majestic Witch of Theatergoing, Drama and Spectating's Grand City of Carefully Selected Books"]] (or "City of Books" to make it short). It's a library so gigantic that the shelves are compared to skyscrapers − it's not called "city" for nothing.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond'': Gotham has grown even more massive, to the point where it seems to be nothing but superstructures. Rooftop parks, vertical commuter trains, and elevated neighborhoods are common. The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlobFExM-UM opening]] shows Gotham's old skyline, which is positively dwarfed by the new skyline behind it. One episode centers around a robot called the G.L.M. [[FunWithAcronyms (Galvanic Lifter Machine, aka GOLEM)]] a fifty-foot tall monstrosity that is used to build these structures.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheJetsons''. You rarely see the ground throughout the whole series, with the only exception being the seventh episode, "The Flying Suit," where George flies down to the surface. It is bright, grassy, and populated by birds who took to the ground now that the humans are in the sky, though there is a hobo or two walking around as well. On the flip side, [[WesternAnimation/JetsonsTheMovie the theatrical film]] implies that most people live in the sky because the Earth had become dangerously polluted: the clouds below these elevated buildings are mostly smog.

* ''WesternAnimation/SamuraiJack'': Jack frequently finds himself in cities like this. It's most apparent in "Jack and the Hunters," when hunters chase Jack up the buildings to the rooftops. Aku seems to put his lairs only in these super-tall cities too, which may be why Jack seems to be in these megalopolises half the time he's wandering the planet.

* ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog'' is absolutely full of these, beginning with Star Light Zone in the [[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog1 original game]]. As far as this trope goes, this series is notable for not needing to look futuristic, with plenty of examples using architecture from the past. Apparently, in the Sonic universe, even ancient people knew how to make extremely tall, sprawling cities.

[[folder:Visual Novels]]
* ''VisualNovel/UminekoWhenTheyCry'': Invoked in the last Episode with [[GreatBigLibraryOfEverything "the Majestic Witch of Theatergoing, Drama and Spectating's Grand City of Carefully Selected Books"]] (or "City of Books" to make it short). It's a library so gigantic that the shelves are compared to skyscrapers − it's not called "city" for nothing.
[[/folder]]

Common in {{Cyberpunk}} settings, and a SubTrope of MegaCity. Compare CityPlanet, StarScraper, CrystalSpiresAndTogas, and SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale. LayeredMetropolis is a subtrope. Not to be confused with a HiveCity, which is a city comprised of only one building; or for an {{Arcology}}, which is a city in one skyscraper.

Common in {{Cyberpunk}} settings, and a SubTrope of MegaCity. Compare CityPlanet, StarScraper, CrystalSpiresAndTogas, and SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale. LayeredMetropolis is a subtrope. Not to be confused with a HiveCity, which is a city comprised of only one building.

Common in CyberPunk settings, and a SubTrope of MegaCity. Compare CityPlanet, StarScraper, CrystalSpiresAndTogas, and SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale. LayeredMetropolis is a subtrope. Not to be confused with a HiveCity, which is a city comprised of only one building.

* Emphasized in ''Anime/GhostInTheShell'', albeit with many skyscrapers looking [[UsedFuture somewhat dilapidated and unpleasant to live in]]. One famous scene focuses on showing the claustrophobic view of the skyscrapers from street level (including many skyscrapers under construction and covered with unsightly girders) while other scenes show it from above (the ground seemingly covered with brightly-lit roads and highways). [[SubvertedTrope Uniquely]], many of these tall structures look quite bulky and mass-produced rather than slim and sleek architectural masterpieces, possibly alluding to the budding industry of mass-produced ''artificial people''. Nevertheless, the city (presumably Tokyo, as per the Manga, or possibly Hong Kong) is shown to have some under-developed areas (e.g. the open-air marketplace) which would seem very familiar to anyone born/living in an East Asian city during the last century.

* ''Literature/HonorHarrington'': The combination of super-durable construction materials and counter-gravity tech means most cities built by advanced cultures are built this way. It's noted in ''Cauldron of Ghosts'' that residential towers intended for "seccies" (second-class citizens) are limited to a mere 300 stories tall so they'll always see the full-citizen towers looming over them.

[[caption-width-right:350:Excuse me sir, do you know where I could find [[UnderCity the ground?]]]]

[[caption-width-right:350:Excuse me sir, do you know where I could find [[TheCityNarrows the ground?]]]]

%%* ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'': Gotham City. Even more so in ''Film/TheDarkKnightTrilogy'' and taken UpToEleven in the posters.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* The most developed cities often end up [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_with_the_most_skyscrapers having a rather high ratio of tall buildings to land area]], although most would be puny in a typical sci-fi setting.
* UsefulNotes/UnitedStatesOfAmerica is perhaps the TropeCodifier of this trope in RealLife.
** [[BigApplesauce New York City]] (especially Manhattan) and UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}} are arguably the TropeMakers and have had this as their reputation since the 1930s.
*** {{Lampshaded}} by Creator/JimmyFallon in one of his "Thank you" notes.
---> "Thank you...New York, for being the only city in America with enough tall buildings for ComicBook/SpiderMan to do his thing. Could you imagine if Peter Parker was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico? LAAAME!"
** An {{Aversion}} is UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC which had a height restriction on buildings that makes the Washington Monument the tallest building in the city. A popular myth is that the law specifically restricts any building from being taller than the monument, but this is not the case as the law grandfathered all buildings taller than the restricted height... the Washington Monument was the only structure that qualified at the time of the law's enactment. The fact that the most common buildings in D.C. {{Establishing Shot}}s are all on the National Mall (a park running 1.9 miles from the Capitol Building in the East to the Lincoln Memorial in the West, with the Washington Monument in the center (in front of the White House). Additionally, the White House is notably one of the smallest State Residences in the entire world and doesn't have much in the way of room for [[WalkAndTalk long walking conversations as is common in many TV shows set in the building.]] There are plenty of skyscrapers in the edge cities that make up the D.C. metropolitan area, with Arlington, Virginia (right across the Potomac from DC proper) and Tyson's Corner, Virginia being two notable examples.
** [[UsefulNotes/OtherCitiesInTexas San Antonio, Texas]] is an interesting {{subversion}} because the ground is perfect for building skyscrapers, and the ones that are there are fairly impressive, but the city has mostly grown outward, rather than upward. The Frost Bank building is the first skyscraper to go up in thirty years. These are known as "sprawl cities" where there simply isn't that much of an incentive to stay confined.
** UsefulNotes/{{Philadelphia}} provides an interesting DoubleSubversion: Its City Hall was the tallest pre-skyscraper building in the world (and remains the world's tallest masonry building), but after that actual skyscrapers in the city studiously remained shorter than City Hall[[note]]By height, not floor count; Philly office towers could easily reach 30-40 stories without breaking the rule[[/note]] under a weird developers' gentlemen's agreement. The result was that for the better part of the 20th century, Philly's skyline was weirdly flat for an American city. However, after Liberty Place (deliberately built way taller than City Hall) was built in the 1980s, Philadelphia developers built taller and taller in Center City basically without limit. The result is that the skyline is dominated by postmodern and neomodern buildings built since 1985, even though Philly is one of the oldest big cities in the U.S.[[note]]Among the top 10 cities proper, only New York is older; if you turn instead to the list of largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas, Boston (founded 1630) comes in between NYC (founded 1624) and Philly (founded 1682) by age. All three cities were founded in the 17th century; basically all the other major cities in the country were founded after 1700. (Detroit comes closest, being founded in 1701, but no cigar.)[[/note]]
** Other examples of American Skyscraper cities include Las Vegas, Seattle, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, and Denver.
* Ever since UsefulNotes/{{China}}'s [[UsefulNotes/ToGetRichIsGlorious economy started to rise rapidly]] in the TheNewTens, it has now become a second trope codifier. Examples of Chinese cities full of skyscrapers include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Chongqing, Beijing, Nanjing, and countless others.
* Rest of UsefulNotes/{{Asia}}:
** Before there was China, there was (and still is) UsefulNotes/{{Japan}}. Of course, UsefulNotes/{{Tokyo}} is a quintessential example of a skyscraper city, lending its likeness to countless fictional skyscraper cities in various fictional works across Anime, Film, and others.
** Hong Kong, due to its mountainous terrain, is considered the tallest city in the world, having more skyscrapers than New York, and the most in the world at 355.
** Singapore is especially noteworthy. Its strategic location and tight land space means that much of the global trade passes through its ports, giving it tremendous amounts of money, leading to a skyscraper city.
** Similar to Hong Kong in that it's a port city with a lot of mountains limiting horizontal expansion, UsefulNotes/{{Busan}} in UsefulNotes/{{South Korea}} also has a lot of skyscrapers, even more so than the capital UsefulNotes/{{Seoul}} which has more than twice as much population.
** However Seoul is unparalleled in the amount of high-rise building it has, [[https://www.archdaily.com/896442/which-cities-have-the-most-high-rises far outstripping Moscow, the city with the second most high-rises, by a whopping 20,000 buildings]].
** Really any city in the Asian Tigers. Don't forget Taipei and Macau.
** Another notable region in Asia is the Gulf. Money gained from Oil and Natural Gas has given the countries of this region a massive boost in building infrastructure, leading to the building of impressive cities at breathtaking speeds. Examples include Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Manama, Kuwait, Riyadh, and Jeddah.
** And now with increasingly rising economies in South and Southeast Asia, countries in these regions now also have examples of skyscraper cities. Notable examples include Kuala Lampur, Ho Chi Minh City, Bangkok, and Mumbai.
* Europe is notorious for being mostly an aversion of this trope, with only a few exceptions who play it straight:
** A noteworthy ''aversion'' is London, which has a similar population to New York City [[note]]and the same property price issue that made the Big Apple the indirect trope namer for FriendsRentControl[[/note]] but only has the same number of skyscrapers (defined as buildings over 150m in height) as relatively tiny Boston. This is because of an issue that fictional examples of this trope often gloss over: The suitability (or lack thereof) of the terrain to hold a building's weight. London is on marshy, low-lying ground that couldn't support a Manhattan-style skyscraper until architectural technology caught up, and the first true example wasn't started until the '90s. Politics also play a part in this, as [[UsefulNotes/OneLondonThirtyThreeBoroughs each London borough]] has different height restrictions on how tall buildings can go (this is why Westminster is skyscraper allergic despite covering a large portion of Central London). But with more and more skyscrapers being built recently, London has become a straight example of this.
** Paris ZigZags trope. When the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_Montparnasse Montparnasse Tower]] was completed in 1973, it was immediately considered by locals as such an ugly and disgusting eyesore, that when the local politicians proposed a maximum height limit on the city's construction codes, the people's approval was nearly unanimous. However, this only applied to the department of Paris, not to the departments outside of the Beltway, skyscrapers are most definitely profitable, and there were lots of people willing to build lots of them; as a result, if you walk from the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe and then continue walking straight until you leave the department of Paris, as soon as you cross the Beltway you'll enter the Skyscraper District of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Défense La Défense]].
** Another notable aversion is Moscow, which is in the same bailiwick population-wise, but has even fewer skyscrapers than London, if for a different reason. Moscow sits on sturdy clays underlain by stable basalt plate, so geology was no object. The reason was simply economical: back in the Communist era, when all land belonged to state that enforced strict building and zoning regulations, there simply wasn't much incentive to build up aside from the occasional prestige project — free land was a commodity Russia never had a shortage of. Only in UsefulNotes/TheNewRussia, after the land market appeared in TheNineties, skyscrapers became economically viable, and even then they are often criticized as built more for prestige than out of genuine necessity.
** Other European cities with a sizable number of skyscrapers include Frankfurt, Milan, Warsaw and Istanbul.
* As for the rest of the world, look out for São Paulo in Brazil, Panama City in... Panama, and Sydney, Melbourne, and Gold Coast in Australia, as well as Toronto in Canada, which has the CN Tower, which at one point was the tallest freestanding structure on land in the world, and Toronto is also currently undergoing a major condo boom.
[[/folder]]

* As for the rest of the world, look out for São Paulo in Brazil, Panama City in... Panama, and Sydney, Melbourne, and Gold Coast in Australia, as well as Toronto in Canada, which has the CN Tower, which at one point was the tallest freestanding structure on land in the world and Toronto is also currently undergoing a major condo boom.

* As for the rest of the world, look out for São Paulo in Brazil, Panama City in... Panama, and Sydney, Melbourne, and Gold Coast in Australia.

Common in CyberPunk settings, and a SubTrope of MegaCity. Compare CityPlanet, StarScraper, CrystalSpiresAndTogas, and SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale. LayeredMetropolis is a subtrope.

* VideoGame/Ghostrunner has Darma tower, city size skyscraper and last refuge of humanity.

** Singapore is especially noteworthy. Its strategic location means that much of the global trade passes through its ports, giving it tremendous amounts of money, leading to a skyscraper city.

** UsefulNotes/{{Philadelphia}} provides an interesting DoubleSubversion: Its City Hall was the tallest pre-skyscraper building in the world (and remains the world's tallest masonry building), but after that actual skyscrapers in the city studiously remained shorter than City Hall[[note]]By height, not floor count; Philly office towers could easily reach 30-40 stories without breaking the rule[[/note]] under a weird developers' gentlemen's agreement. The result was that for the better part of the 20th century, Philly's skyline was weirdly flat for an American city. However, after Liberty Place (deliberately built way taller than City Hall) was built in the 1980s, Philadelphia developers built taller and taller in Center City basically without limit. The result is that the skyline is dominated by postmodern and neomodern buildings built since 1985, even though Philly is one of the oldest big cities in the U.S.[[note]]Among the top 10 cities proper, only New York is older; if you turn instead to the list of largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas, Boston comes in between NYC and Philly. All three cities were founded in the 17th century; basically all the other major cities in the country were founded after 1700. (Detroit comes closest, being founded in 1701, but no cigar.)[[/note]]

** UsefulNotes/{{Philadelphia}} provides an interesting DoubleSubversion: Its City Hall was the tallest pre-skyscraper building in the world (and remains the world's tallest masonry building), but after that actual skyscrapers in the city studiously remained shorter than City Hall[[note]]By height, not floor count; Philly office towers could easily reach 30-40 stories without breaking the rule[[/note]] under a weird developers' gentlemen's agreement. The result was that for the better part of the 20th century, Philly's skyline was weirdly flat for an American city. However, after Liberty Place (deliberately built way taller than City Hall) was built in the 1980s, Philadelphia developers built taller and taller in Center City basically without limit. The result is that the skyline is dominated by postmodern and neomodern buildings built since 1985, even though Philly is one of the three oldest big cities in the U.S.

* ''VideoGame/NinjaGaidenII'': The opening level, Sky City Tokyo, is exactly this. Your destination on the level is one of two twin towers... both built on top of an even bigger tower. Itself built several hundred meters above the ground. In the UpdatedRerelease Sigma II, you fight a [[GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere Buddha statue the size of the Statue of Liberty]] (which you ''also'' fight afterwards) at the end of the level: it looks puny compared to the building it climbs.

** Other European cities with a sizable number of skyscrapers include Frankfurt, Milan, and Istanbul.