The skyline used to belong to God. The spires and domes which punctured the horizons rose upwards in acknowledgment of a higher purpose. Then came the brick chimneys of industry and their plumes of smoke. Then the monuments of civic identity — the Statue of Liberty, Nelson’s Column, the Eiffel Tower as the power shifted to the cities grown wealthy. These were in turn followed by the skyscrapers as the real influence moved to the corporations and banks which built them. The skyline has always revealed who owns the city, where the real power lies and to whom — or what — the citizens look up. That is why the most recent shift in our skylines demands to be noticed. Anyone visiting New York and looking up will see the city’s skyline radically changing. A new typology has emerged — the skinny scraper — the ultra-slender, uber-extruded tower whose spiritual home is the edge of Central Park. These attenuated fingers casting their anorexic shadows on to the grass are beginning to exert a real impact on Manhattan’s horizon. Rafael Viñoly’s 96-storey 432 Park Avenue kicked the new era off. Shop Architects’ tapering, astonishingly slender 111 W57th is providing the next instalment. The latter will rise to above the height of the Empire State Building. Jean Nouvel’s MoMA tower and Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill’s Nordstrom Tower are to come. Both will dominate Manhattan’s new horizon. What is so striking about this new kind of skyscraper is its use — these are condo towers, often with only a single apartment to each floor and 360 degree views of the city. Perhaps that is why the shock has been so visceral — they appear to represent a de facto privatisation of the skyline.