(no subject)

[randomness]

I like cool new architecture as much as anyone. However, stories like this make me think "commercial real estate bubble":

The 121-story Shanghai Tower is more than China's next record-setting building: It's an economic lifeline for the elite club of skyscraper builders.

Financial gloom has derailed plans for new towers in Chicago, Moscow, Dubai and other cities. But in China, work on the 2,074-foot (632-meter) Shanghai Tower, due to be completed in 2014, and dozens of other tall buildings is rushing ahead, powered by a buoyant economy and providing a steady stream of work to architects and engineers.

China's edifice complex is driven by a mix of demand for space in a crowded country with economic growth forecast at 10 percent this year and local leaders who want architectural eye candy to promote their cities as commercial centers.

Dozens of midsize Chinese cities are building new business districts to replace cramped downtowns. They look to the model of Shanghai's skyscraper-packed Pudong district — China's Wall Street — created in the 1990s on reclaimed industrial land.

"Governments are encouraging these iconic buildings in order to give a very clear message to the outside world: Please pay attention to our city," said Dennis Poon, managing principal of Thornton Tomasetti, the Shanghai Tower's structural engineers.

(emphasis mine)

Well, then! What could go wrong with that plan?

Comments

hutongs

[doctordidj.livejournal.com]

I loved staying in the hutongs of Beijing, when I was there, in 2000. Mazes of little alleys, full of local street life, rich with history. At that time they'd already bulldozed many neighborhoods to make way for generic high rise boxes. I hope they've managed to keep at least some of the hutongs.

Re: hutongs

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Some of them are still there, although nowhere near as many as there used to be, and some have been tarted up into Disneyfied showcases of themselves.

I got to visit a family living in a traditional house in one of the hutongs the first time I went to Beijing, and I got to stay in a hostel along one this time. They're definitely something to visit before they disappear.