Transforming America: One High-Rise at a Time

For most city-dwellers, the elevator is an unremarkable machine that inspires none of the passion or interest that Americans afford trains, jets, and even bicycles. Without the elevator, there could be no downtown skyscrapers or residential high-rises, and city life as we know it would be impossible (Neyfakh, 2014).

It is argued that the elevator has not been recognized as an innovative, astounding mode of transportation as the automobile has and continues to be recognized. Every year there are new, increasingly modern models of vehicles that are being released from large automobile manufacturers that hold the excitement for millions of consumers. Unfortunately, elevators are often overlooked with their technological advancements. Elevators move more than the equivalent of the world’s population in 72 hours. That’s 7.4 billion people in only 3 days (ElevatorWorld, 2016)! This requires copious amounts of effort on the part of manufacturers, elevator maintenance companies, extensive research, and safety guidelines that the elevator industry has to abide by and overcome every day. As an incredible and intricate detail of machinery that requires consistent service and safety vigilance elevators are sorely lacking the appreciation they deserve.

Today, as the world’s urban population explodes, and cities become denser, taller, and more crowded, America’s arsenal of elevators – over 900,000 at last count, according to Elevator Worlds magazine’s 2015 Vertical Transportation Industry Profile – are a force that’s becoming more important than ever. Of course with all of the advancements in the elevator industry, it has never really quite lost the strangeness that makes it so different from anything else we experience in our daily lives. For all the association with modernity and all the large-scale changes elevators have enabled, the elevator ride itself – this small, enduring moment of sharing a box with semi-strangers – has been reminding us, for 150 years, of a crucial fact about what it means to be part of a society: that even when they’re standing still, everyone around is on their way somewhere and elevators will always be there for the ride.

Sources:

1. Neyfakh, Leon (March 2, 2014). How the elevator transformed America. Retrieved from: The Boston Globe, website: https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/03/02/how-elevator-transformed-america/b8u17Vx897wUQ8zWMTSvYO/story.html
2. Hanno van der Bijl (June 29, 2016). 9 Elevator Facts You Didn’t Know. Retrieved from: Elevator World Blog, website: http://www.elevatorworld.com/blogs/page/3/