Seoul’s skyline 3rd ‘highest’ in the world: report

Company ranks cities based on number of high-rise floors

Seoul was recently named the world’s third ‘tallest’ city.

According to the recent "Skyline Rankings" report by Emporis Buildings, an international building-related information provider, Seoul has the third-highest skyline in the world, with 16,558 points. According to the Emporis Web site, the rankings are meant to reflect "the visual impact of their skylines," and is calculated using the floor count of a city’s tallest high-rises.

China’s city-state Hong Kong topped the rankings with 121,527 points, followed by New York with 36,272 points. Other cities in the top-five rankings were Chicago and Singapore, respectively. Shanghai came in sixth and Tokyo ranked ninth.

In terms of the number of taller-than-12-story buildings, Seoul came in fifth with 2,870 buildings, after Hong Kong (7,620), New York (5,548), Sao Paulo (4,514), and Singapore (3,757).

When it comes to population of a metropolitan area, Seoul ranked third with 22.3 million people, behind Tokyo (34.2 million) and Mexico City (22.8 million). Fourth place went to New York with 21.9 million, and Sao Paulo came in fifth with 20.2 million people.

Meanwhile, out of the world’s top 500 companies, nine have headquarters in Seoul, placing the city sixth in the rankings. Under these rankings, the top five cities were Tokyo, Paris, New York, London, and Beijing.