High rise and tower running

I’ve never liked living in high rise towers.

It is the dislocation from land that I find unnerving, a sort of suspension in space and the prospect that the plug could be pulled at any time and we would come crashing down to the land far below us. A sense of community is also lost: at ground level you are part of a social system but 16 floors up you are far removed from the social interactions taking place down below.

But as the global population continues to increase it is inevitable that more and more people will have to live in such buildings.

In 1800, there were less than 1 billion people on planet Earth.

Today there are 6.7 billion (see the latest figure in real time here).

And by 2050, there will be an estimated 9 billion people on this planet!

So more apartment towers will be needed.

And as we take to vertical living, our habits change. In the old days it was street running and running around football stadiums the wrong way.

But now it is running up tower blocks in a new sport called “Tower Running”.

The Swissotel Vertical Marathon recently took place in Singapore and the 32rd Annual Empire State Building Run Up is scheduled for 3 February 2009 (application form: here)

And if that all sounds too tiring? Well just take the lift…