Why did they build them? Any practical advantage to live so high?
The article asserts (plausibly, but does not justify it) that there is a correlation between land value and structure height, since a higher structure has more floor area to be used in that high value area, while in a low land-value area you can do the same thing by spreading out. The article is actually quite disappointing as it’s really just clickbait content for a video that I have no interest in watching.
Its not like they rented out office space like in downtown Manhattan. Also no factories that required thousands of workers. So I'm not sure the modern analogy of square footage applies.
They fell out of favor by the 16th century. Coincidentally about the same time as cannon starting being very effective.