Business is booming in this U.S. ‘socialist hellhole’ — just look at the skyline

It’s no Dubai, but Seattle is king of cranes in the United States.

For the third year in a row, the Emerald City has ridden the explosive growth of Amazon AMZN, -1.63%  and the rest of its tech scene to top all others by one telling growth metric: 65 towering construction cranes dot its skyline, according to Rider Levett Bucknall data cited by the Seattle Times.

Or, as Mike Rosenberg, the author of the story, puts it: “Socialist hellhole leads nation in cranes, home price increases and pay increases.”

Here’s the full map (h/t Barry Ritholtz):

As you can see, Seattle has more than twice as many cranes as any other city aside from the much larger metropolises of Chicago with 40 and L.A. with 36.

The cranes, which reportedly cost $50,000 a month and need to be reserved about six months in advance, are primarily being used to build apartments in an effort to ease the tight rental market. And their work has a ways to go.

“I haven’t seen any slowdown in incoming investment from Asia or the Middle East,” Doug Demers of B&H Architects told the Seattle Times. “There’s huge demand for housing and infrastructure, and I don’t think that’s going to change.”

Seattle may lead the rest of the country in cranes, but its barely a blip on the global stage, where Dubai has 1,182 cranes and Sydney has 346.