Tallhigh

Tallhigh is a fictional metric used in speculative urbanism and world-building to quantify the visual dominance of vertical structures in a city’s skyline. It serves as a conceptual tool to compare how a skyline reflects architectural ambition, planning priorities, and social dynamics within a given setting. Because tallhigh is not a real-world standard, writers and designers typically define it in flexible ways suitable to their narratives or simulations.

Calculation and variations of tallhigh vary by author, but common approaches revolve around the distribution of building heights within a defined urban area. A typical formulation considers a sample of tall structures and relates the height of the tallest building (Hmax) to a central tendency of nearby tall buildings, such as the mean (Hmean) or median (Hmedian). For example, tallhigh can be expressed as Hmax divided by Hmedian (tallhigh = Hmax/Hmedian). In other treatments, the ratio of the tallest to the average height (Hmax/Hmean) or a percentile-based spread may be used. Higher values indicate a skyline dominated by one or a few super-tall towers, while lower values suggest a more evenly distributed height profile.

Applications of tallhigh appear in world-building guides, speculative fiction, and design-oriented games. It helps convey themes such as technological prowess, economic inequality, policy constraints, and cultural identity through skyline characteristics. The metric is purely fictional and informal, intended to provoke reflection on how vertical scale shapes perception and power within urban space. Related concepts include skyline aesthetics, megatall thresholds, and height distribution in urban planning.