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‘China’s Manhattan’ Borrowed Heavily, but the People Have Yet to Arrive
- ucosty 8y agoJust in case you've reached your article limit http://archive.is/xDydO http://archive.is/xDydO
- seppin 8y agoCan we stop using Manhattan as shorthand for a giant city center? NYC is a cultural world capital, as well as economic hub. Good luck trying to actually build another one of those. There's a reason why there's only 3-4 in the world and they haven't changed in centuries.
- breakbread 8y agoFrom TFA: > Welcome to Yujiapu Financial District, which promotes itself as China’s Manhattan...
- dan_quixote 8y agoI've heard people unironically refer to Frankfurt as 'Frankhattan' and it makes me cringe. Be your own identity.
- chihuahua 8y agoI've heard the name "Mainhattan" being used, because it's located on the river named "Main"
- ghostly_s 8y agoI see... about 20 skyscrapers? More like China's downtown Cincinnati...
- sct202 8y agoIt's also 30 miles away from the city center of Tianjin. I can see why no one wants to live there.
- leighfuu 8y agoCompletely agree. Cities exist because of people/trade/geography, occasionally humans miss a place, or something about the above changes and centrally planning one works. And the reverse happens too, climate change, technology, and movement of people can all *end a city. England has this in a microcosm in the north. Huge great cities sprung and died on the change in technology. America is going through the same process with Detroit and rust belt.
- jimmaswell 8y agoWhat do you consider the other ones? And I'm guessing the reason is valuable geographical position (in NYC's case it's a major shipping hub for both the Atlantic and the Hudson River) and the network effect. But valuable geography can change over time, and who knows how long the network effect of cities is going to last when we finally start making more jobs remote instead of wasting space and other resources on offices and people are free to live wherever they want.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- saalweachter 8y agoIt was the Erie Canal that really made New York -- it allowed shipping into the Great Lakes.
- seppin 8y ago> What do you consider the other ones? London obviously, but they might be turning inwards with Brexit and losing that status. The next tier is Tokyo, maybe another Asian capital soon. Paris, Vienna, etc. were part of a Euro-centric world but don't have much relevancy beyond a holiday destination. London and NYC both create culture from aspects of people from around the world, then export it. I don't see China being able to do this.
- heurist 8y agoNYC only became a cultural and financial center in the last century. The core Western cultural hub has been moving around over the last couple centuries - Vienna, Paris, NYC, now arguably SF. It's not impossible for another to rise in this century. I could easily see two world cultural centers reflecting the divide in underlying cultural polarities (conformism vs. individualism, etc). China as the epicenter for a new pole makes sense, though stifled speech may affect it. Maybe a diverse satellite, like Hong Kong or Bangkok. (I haven't visited Asia so I don't have a good grasp of dynamics there).
- notfromhere 8y agoSan Francisco is not a cultural hub. Cultural products still largely come out of two places: LA and NYC. edit: anyone downvoting, feel free to defend what makes SF the cultural hub for western civilization.
- heurist 8y agoTechnological and social impact. SV owns the west's attention and behavior right now. I do not consider art to be the only cultural artifact. OP in this thread actually included financial impact in its consideration of NYC. Technology is as much a cultural factor as finance.
- seppin 8y ago> Technological and social impact. That's what makes SF a financial capital. What are its cultural contributions? Hoodies and overpriced coffee? > SV owns the west's attention and behavior right now Tech acts to capture and reflect culture, it doesn't create any. Even if it did, having companies based in SF wouldn't make the city itself a cultural capital. Just economic.
- notfromhere 8y agoIt's an ironic claim given how tech has driven out all the creative types out of SF
- chrischen 8y agoI’m not a big fan of centrally planned cities, but this author has it out for China. The original articles about “China’a ghost town” were also not true. A narrative was invented to sell an interesting story about some failure of China... this article is a non-story, and just an attempt to revive a topic parroted since the last decade. Many of China’s urban districts were centrally planned and sat empty before they were eventually filled, including the famous Pudong district of Shanghai. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2018/03/19/ghost-towns-or-boomtowns-what-new-cities-really-become/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepar... "If you look around, you will think this is a normal city and just assume this is the way it always was, not knowing that 10 years ago people were calling it a ghost city, 20 years ago it was just apartments and villages." https://www.google.com/amp/amp.abc.net.au/article/9912186 https://www.google.com/amp/amp.abc.net.au/article/9912186 Short story is some developments work, others don’t, but investing in real estate is one way for people to park money so people still end up buying up all the properties.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ilamont 8y agoQuoting from Caixing Global, a PRC-based financial news source: China Investment Network, a business newspaper in Beijing, released a "ghost town index" to determine which cities were, well, the most ghostly. The newspaper devised its index using a government standard that says cities should have 10,000 people per square kilometer. The editors at China Investment Network determined that if a city's ratio of people to area was 0.5 – that is, it was half full – then it is a ghost town. To take the example a step further, if a city had a ratio of .10, then it had one-tenth the population the government thought it deserved. Based on this approach, at least 50 Chinese cities fit the description of "ghost town." (1) This report is from 2014, so maybe some of those cities were eventually filled ... but surely not all of them. 1. https://www.caixinglobal.com/2014-10-17/graphics-ghost-towns-101012983.html https://www.caixinglobal.com/2014-10-17/graphics-ghost-towns...
- asah 8y ago
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- duxup 8y agoMy understanding is that the amount of local government debt is pretty high generally in China, but the central government is basically the one backing it all to some extent correct? So the question is what does the central government choose to do about it?
- neffy 8y agoIt's mostly in the banking system. They introduced loan securitization about 5 years ago, and have been walking down the same path the US went in the 90's and 00's. It will be indeed be interesting to see how they handle a banking system implosion.
- jedberg 8y agoIt sounds like the construction might have been a big jobs program.
- gzu 8y agoI’ve been browsing around satellite view of Chinese cities for a while now. There are hundreds of thousands of high rise apartment complexes without visible activity around them. Literally copy paste buildings surrounded by empty fields. How does this bode for China’s economy? They are all over the place.
- yorwba 8y agoI'm curious about your reasons for browsing satellite images of Chinese cities. Are you looking for something in particular?
- glvn 8y agoCuriosity?
- gzu 8y agoI’m interested in the China/global economy and this is one of the many data points.
- yorwba 8y agoThanks for the reply and I hope it's okay if I ask some follow-up questions. Are you doing some kind of manual sampling or have you automated parts of it? Also, what kinds of objects can be distinguished with the images you use? I assume it might require a bit of practice to reliably recognize certain kinds of structures.
- duxup 8y agoI wonder how much it has to do with ambitious real-estate / encouraging growth ... and maybe a little communist legacy of building massive blocks of apartments for housing. Granted when I think of block after block of cookie cutter buildings I think of my travels in eastern Europe, maybe China had that tradition too?
- dsadsasdasda 8y agofirst, china has a population of 1.5b, compared to the US 20. So to get an idea of what the US equivalent of a building project would be, divide it by 5. Now observe as the rents in big US cities have grown unaffordable for a majority of people due to insufficient building, what China is doing is much better. Having too many apartments available for 20 years is good compared to having none.
- aglavine 8y agoWhy not to move government? Move China government to one of these planned cities? That seems to work when doing well.
- narrator 8y agoGhost towns are only scary if there is a credit collapse and no one can buy them because of the unavailability of bank financing. The central government in China will always make sure there's bank financing because it controls the printing of money.
- heurist 8y agoGarden cities have never worked and never will work. I'm sure they have their reasons for building these now, but they will be big liabilities for China in 30 years, just like they have been in the US. (Speaking as a fan of Jane Jacobs and someone who works with fine-grained microeconomic data)
- taobility 8y agoWestern economists have predict China economy would collapse in two decades ago and repeated every year, and their faces been slapped hardly every time. If Yujiapu is called China's Manhattan, there are dozens of bigger Manhattan in China right now and they are doing really good.
- yardie 8y agoWhenever western media tries and portray China as being ridiculous I'm reminded of the 80s or 90s magazine article showing empty highways being built around Beijing when 99% of the population didn't drive a car. I'm way less worried about brand new empty cities. They fill up eventually. I'd be worried more about people abandoning populated cities. A problem the US is facing now.
- duxup 8y ago>They fill up eventually. Isn't that the pattern for most real estate speculation problems?
- itake 8y agoWhat cities are being abandoned in the US?
- okmokmz 8y agoDetroit comes to mind
- entropicdrifter 8y agoPeople are steadily flocking from smaller cities to major cities all over the country
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- britch 8y agoSmall/mid size cities in the midwest like Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago (though to a lesser extent). Other "cities" are growing in the sun-belt. It's complicated because many of the up-and-coming cities are being built with cars in mind and are not very dense. They are "cities" but they are not urban.
- adventured 8y ago
- chvid 8y agoOn the coast, one hour from Beijing. This is obviously an extremely attractive area. Give it a couple of years and it will be busy and wealthy.
- umeshunni 8y agoMeanwhile, in major American cities, people sleep on the streets and even middle class people can't afford housing.
- jlarocco 8y agoThat's interesting, but I don't know what I'm supposed to take away from it. The article is trying to spin it as negative, but they never get to the point. In the United States we'd never preemptively build up a city like this, so obviously China is different, but I don't see what the problem is. They have lots of interview with people saying buildings are empty, but nothing official saying it's a problem or that the Chinese government is worried about it. What were the expectations for filling the buildings? Are they behind schedule? And sure, $4.5-10 trillion in debt sounds bad, but it's less than half of ours in the United States.
- kpU8efre7r 8y agoAre there any healthy, major, "planned" cities? It seems to me that the vast majority of successful healthy cities just spring up naturally at a time and place that makes economic sense. Humans tend to gather and live in groups that are either near a resource or in a location that serves as a hub between resources.
- yhoneycomb 8y agoirvine, ca
- kpU8efre7r 8y agoI didn't know that, thanks. Reading up on it though, it seems like there was already a lot of growth in the region and development happened over the course of decades.