From the Lighthouse of Alexandria through the spires of the medieval cathedrals and the Tuscan towers of San Gimignano, the building that aspires to the heavens keeps on coming back.

Cass Gilbert, the architect of one of the first modern skyscrapers, New York’s 1913 Woolworth Building, called the form a “machine for making the land pay”. Yet the idea of the tall building as a product of land value was always questionable. It might have made sense in Manhattan but in Chicago, spiritual home of the skyscraper, in the middle of the great plains of the Midwest? Or in Saudi Arabia, home to the skyscraper that will surpass Dubai’s Burj Khalifa as the tallest building? The Jeddah Tower, to rise more than 1km, is due to be finished in 2019 and will be further proof that height is only tangentially related to land value. It is an expression of desire.

“You can rationalise anything,” says Lord Foster, architect of London’s Gherkin and New York’s Hearst Tower, “but you don’t have to go up to achieve high densities — look at London’s densest neighbourhoods, Notting Hill and Kensington. Really, skyscrapers are built for the hell of it. They’re much more about civic pride. If you cluster skyscrapers together you can make instant urbanity and intensity and create a civic identity.”