There is a right way and a wrong way to build a building. Why am I the only person to have thought of that? Maybe I'm not. I think the builders of big buildings know the difference, but they must consider other things like egos and money. Ego says that top dog is the one with the tallest building. Money says it's cheaper to build on the smallest possible plot, expecially in areas where land brings premium prices.
But tall buildings are the wrong way. An example?

The World Trade Center Towers, were an egotists dream. Very impressive, taller than anything around, and they were located in the heart of New York City where land is rather expensive. It sounded like a good idea.
And then there is the Pentagon, a squatty low building spread all over a site in Virginia where land is a lot cheaper than in NYC. The towers and the Pentagon all took similar hits from the terrorists. The towers fell with great loss of life. Had the hits been lower down the loss would have been much greater. There would have been less chance of escape.

At the Pentagon, only those in the area of the hit died. Everybody else had avenues of escape. The damage was close to the ground (Thank goodness this was not true at the WTC!) where firefighters could quickly begin fighting the blaze. A relatively small portion of the building was destoyed, and that has already been repaired. In spite of it's fortress-like appearence, the Pentagon was no stronger than the towers. It was simply a design that is better and safer.

Any large fire would have destroyed a WCT tower. It almost happened once before, but the second time, luck ran out.

The correct formula for safer buildings would require a comparison of demintions. We need to look at the length, width and height of a proposed building. If the longest demintion is height, don't build it. We recently stayed in a hotel in Surfside, S.C. It was eight stories tall and our room was on the top floor. But the building was longer than it was tall, so in case of fire or explosion, we had somewhere to go besides down. The chances of an entire floor catching fire all at the same time were greatly reduced. If it was at one end, we could head for the stairs at the other end of the building. Even if it was in the middle, we could still reach a stairway and excape. I'm still not comfortable above the third floor, but escape routes make it a little easier if the only room available is higher up. And never in a million years would you ever have gotten me up in one of those towers.
Howard