City Skylines Around The World

A skyline is best described as the overall or partial view of a city's tall buildings and structures consisting of many skyscrapers in front of the sky in the background. It can also be described as the artificial horizon that a city's overall structure creates. Skylines serve as a kind of fingerprint of a city, as no two skylines are alike. For this reason news and sports programs, television shows, and movies often display the skyline of a city to set location. The Sky Line of New York City was a new term in 1896, when it was the title of a color lithograph by Charles Graham for the color supplement of the New-York Journal.
Paul D. Spreiregen, FAIA, has called a skyline "a physical representation facts of life ... a potential work of art ... its collective vista."
In general, larger cities have broader and taller skylines, though lower density cities often have smaller skylines than expected for city size. Taller buildings are found where either land value or desire for visibility is higher, and the tallest buildings in a city are usually office buildings. Because of this, the skyline of a city can be seen as symbolic of the city's influence and economy.
Skylines need not be formed by skyscrapers or tall buildings alone; neither is the term confined to larger cities. Skylines can also be dominated by other tall structures such as smoke stacks or other industrial chimneys, smelters, cranes, cooling towers, radio and TV masts, refineries, power lines, wind turbines, etc. In many cases a skyline dominated by these structures is considered an eyesore or as 'horizon pollution' rather than a symbol of wealth and influence.