Preface. One reason Paris is such a lovely city is that it was built to human scale, with buildings of five stories or less, because that was about as high as people were willing to climb, so not surprisingly, rents were highest on the first floor.  This post discusses tall buildings in light of the coming energy crisis. We really shouldn't be building any more of them... When I spent two weeks in New York City I remember feeling oppressed and anxious by the constant darkness, depressed by the coal stained concrete and metal buildings unrelieved by green parks, accompanied by an angry soundtrack of horns from desperate motorists trapped in an endless traffic jam. Tall buildings won't last long without fossil fuels. In North Korea, where the electricity is seldom on, the poor live in the penthouses and climb dozens of flights of stairs to get there. Alice Friedemann  www.energyskeptic.com  Author of Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy; When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, & “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”.  Women in ecology  Podcasts: WGBH, Jore, Planet: Critical, Crazy Town, Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, Kunstler 253 &278, Peak Prosperity,  Index of best energyskeptic posts *** Why only the poorest North Koreans live on the higher floors of skyscrapers (Anderson 2022, An et al 2022) For those lucky enough to live in Pyongyang, which has power some of the time,  you'd better catch the elevator from 6 to 8 am, or 5 to 7 pm in the evening, or you'll need to walk up the stairs, lugging jugs of water since there's no electricity to pump water either. North Korea has finished construction of an 80-story residential skyscraper complete with penthouses in the capital of Pyongyang, but only some of the least fortunate in the country reportedly choose to live on the top floors of the country's high-rise apartments. Defectors have said thi