Courtesy of the Council on Tall Buildings & Urban Habitat

Most of the projected 20 tallest buildings in 2020 would be in Asia, says the tall buildings council.

The Council on Tall Buildings & Urban Habitat is adding a new noun to its dictionary—a megatall—which it defines as a building 600 m or taller. As of 2020, there will likely be eight megatalls, says the council. That assumes, of course, that none of the megatalls on the drawing boards or under construction is canceled, mothballed or cut short.

The projected 20 tallest buildings in 2020, just listed by the CTBUH, are in 15 cities in seven countries. Ten are in China. Korea, which has only one supertall building which is not yet completed, has three towers on the 2020 list.   (The council now defines a supertall as a building 300 m to 599 m.)

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates each have two buildings on the list. Fourteen of the 20 are in Asia, five are in the Middle East. New York City’s One World Trade Center is the only tower in the Western Hemisphere to make the list.

The current tallest building in the world in the 828-m Burj Khalifa in Dubai, U.A.E. Construction is supposed to begin "soon" on the 1-km-plus Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.