In "Tall Building as Metaphor," Guy Nordenson expounds on several interesting philosophies and their relation to buildings. In the openings paragraphs he states that while the World Trade Center and Rockefeller Center communicated "unique" snapshots of "civil will," such an outflow of civic will "did not re-emerge" after September 11, 2001. "Tall buildings, if only by being tall, look to stand out in a crows. In time they may become the crowd, but it is always their intention to speak up, to declare, indeed, even persuade us of their novelty, their sumptuousness, their responsibility to social needs and ideals, their outright beauty, and their abstraction."

Mr. Nordenson gives an outline of high rise history and the accompanying citation