Photo by bennettdesign
China’s ambitious high-speed rail program inaugurated perhaps its most important line yesterday: Beijing to Shanghai. The train made its debut on the eve of the 90th anniversary of the founding of China’s Communist Party with Premier Wen Jiabao onboard declaring the line ‘in operation’.
The trip linking China’s two largest cities takes just under 5 hours and scheduled trains will make stops along the way in Tianjin, Jinan and Nanjing. Continue reading
Consensus among international media is that China’s economy is heading for an imminent and disastrous crash due to its inflated housing market. While there is absolutely no denying that housing prices in central parts of 1st Tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou are sky-high, this does not signal the end of China’s economic rise. If anything, the high price of housing in these cities affirms China’s rise from poor, cut-off backwater to the world’s second largest economy. Continue reading
Urbanist media can’t seem to get enough of the megacity these days. Much of the commentary surrounding this topic is disconcertingly celebratory about these leviathans despite such phenomena as overcrowding, high levels of congestion and sprawling slums.
Yet absent from most of the commentary is any mention cities in China. This is perhaps due in large part to the lack of serious social problems in comparison to its developing city counterparts in other countries. If a megacity is defined as a city with a population of more than 10 million, then China is home to 5 megacities: Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Dongguan. As the country continues to urbanize, more Chinese cities are bound to join the ranks of these megacities.
How has China been able to avoid the pitfalls facing other developing megacities? No one is denying that Chinese cities don’t have problems including unequal income distribution, pollution and growing traffic congestion. Yet China’s megacities seem to have largely avoided social dangers such as violent crime, disease and slum proliferation that plague urban areas of other developing countries.
Following I have identified five points as to how China’s cities have avoided these issues: Continue reading
Beijing Suburbs. Photo by Manuel.A.69.
As China’s expanding cities inevitably swallow up surrounding countryside, the boundaries between urban, rural and suburban areas become progressively more blurred. What today might be farmland could tomorrow be the next central business district sprouting state-of-the-art skyscrapers. This fast-changing reality makes defining what constitutes urban vs suburban with developed-world standards insufficient. China needs its own definitions. Continue reading
A frequently revisited topic in discussions about China’s development is the widespread loss of historic structures and neighborhoods throughout the country’s fast-changing metropolises. From the Western historical preservation perspective, much of what has taken place over the course of China’s three-decade long modernization is nothing short of an epic tragedy. No other narrative exemplifies this lament more than the destruction of the hutong neighborhoods in central Beijing.
Last July, the New York Times ran a story about this very topic, aptly titled ‘Bulldozers Meet Historic Chinese Neighborhood’. The neighborhood in question is Gulou (meaning ‘drum tower’, which is the neighborhood’s landmark, along with the adjacent Zhonglou, or ‘bell tower’). Located in central Beijing, just north of the Forbidden City, Gulou is one of the last remaining areas comprising hutongs (narrow alleys) lined by the accompanying siheyuan (traditional courtyard homes). Continue reading