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PHILADELPHIA — Skyscrapers may be in vogue among architects and financiers as the prominent path to urban innovation, but city officials should look to less ornamental means to make an impact, Philadelphia Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron said yesterday.

Speaking at the TEDxPhilly conference, Saffron admitted that people are in love with the skyscraper, and citizens and officials alike measure their hometown’s worth by how many they have and how tall they reach.

“We tend to, as a nation, associate cities with the dystopian failures of public housing. We talk about concrete jungles and high-rise barracks. But then that began to change,” she said. “Suddenly, cities became cool again.”

The problem? “When Americans visualize a city, they always imagine skyscrapers,” she said, adding that affluent citizens see prestige and progressive city planners see density in height.

“Superheroes used to leap from tall buildings,” she said. “Now, skyscrapers are the hero to save [cities].”

Though the skyscraper was invented in the United States with seven- and ten-story structures in New York and Chicago, the latest trend is no more apparent than in emerging economies such as China, India and the United Arab Emirates, all of whom have appropriated the form to signal their intentions to the world, she said.

“For these up and coming societies, skyscrapers are a way of stating their ambition: ‘Hey, we’re modern too,’” Saffron said. “They also have a billion people to house, and [skyscrapers] are a good way to do that.”

But too often, skyscrapers are a one-size-fits-all approach. Saffron argued that while skyscrapers can be a useful tool for growing urban areas, they are just one of many ideas that can address a city’s most pressing problems.