Quote:
Originally Posted by 10023
I can't help but think cities like Shanghai are going to be miserable places in about 50 years. For one thing, all those concrete housing blocks had better be perfectly maintained so they don't look like their American counterparts from the 50s and 60s, because there are a lot of them.
The bigger issue would be if the Chinese middle class follows the same pattern as most western countries and decamps for the suburbs. They are building in such an out-of-scale way that the only thing keeping Chinese cities from being completely overbearing and soulless is that there's enough pedestrian traffic and street level activity. If the inner cities were to depopulate at all, they would probably be extremely depressing.
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10023, it's pretty obviously you've never been here, and know very little of life in a Chinese mega-city, but I'll bite.
China isn't the west. In fact, when it comes to its cities, they couldn't be more different than your typical American metro region. The 'suburbs' in China are where the poor/under-class live. They are the ones who have to travel by subway or bus for at least an hour everyday to get to work. It serves no purpose to live further outside of the city if you can afford it. Getting a license is severely regulated by the government, and in turn getting a licene plate is expensive and rare, and you'd have to live in a high-rise/ commie block out in the 'burbs' as well. Besides a few ultra-rich enclaves in Pudong and Hongqiao, there's no such thing as a single family home in Shanghai. All the best neighbourhood, schools and amenities are in the central city (where close to 15 million people reside).
Central Shanghai is vibrant. While it may look dark and grey from the sky on a December day, it's a colourful and exciting place to be, and hardly depressing or overbearing visually (this is when it helps actually going to a city before making statements like that). Why would there be some sort of exodus from this area when life would become less convenient and exciting if one were to do so?
In spirit of this thread, here's an aerial (ok, not really) of my neighbourhood in central Shanghai. Does this look overbearing to you?
dramp by
matteroffact, on Flickr
The view from the north of my place might be a bit more intense, but it's hardly soulless.
pink lemonade by
matteroffact, on Flickr
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