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China, especially a few decades ago, was so poor that eminent domain was a complete non-issue. Combined with a fairly authoritarian government system, building
by thehappypm 7y ago
China, especially a few decades ago, was so poor that eminent domain was a complete non-issue. Combined with a fairly authoritarian government system, building a train line faced basically no resistance.
In the US, it's almost the opposite. The places where public transit is most needed are the most highly valuable, densely populated areas, where eminent domain is a nightmare. In the US, all of our highly populated areas are already urban. In the past, that was certainly not the case in China, and to an extent, still so today.
- cestith 7y agoOne of China's more ambitious solutions to this was newly founded, planned metropolises where no major city had previously stood.
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoAka the infamous ghost cities?
- bbradley406 7y agoWhich would you rather have? A city that stands empty, ready for people to move in, or a city so full and restricted that people camp on the streets?
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoChina has both, actually, so you don’t really have to choose. Those cities won’t fill if they are faraway from jobs, migrants go where they can make money even if they have to sleep under a ring road bridge.
- BurningFrog 7y agoChina has no shortage of people. These cities will fill up. Maybe it's my Bay Area PTSD, but if too much housing is the worst problem in your society, I envy you and want to subscribe to your newsletter!
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoI’ve been to a few that haven’t filled up in 10 years, eg kangbashi is going nowhere unless coal makes a big comeback (unlikely). I’ll match your Bay Area PTSD with my Beijing PTSD. The crazy thing is that even in Beijing there are lots of empty apartments (bought by speculators for flipping only who don’t want to renovate them so they can be rented out).
- BurningFrog 7y agoI always want to defer my theoretical speculative punditry to people's real experience, so I'll agree you're probably right.
- cestith 7y agoMany of them, yes. Keep in mind, too, though that there are places like Shenzen. It's grown an order of magnitude in 40 years and was designated as a specific enterprise zone. It was a market town. Now it's an electronics manufacturing powerhouse.
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoFor every Shenzhen there are ten Kangbashies and a couple of Tianjin financial districts.
- BurningFrog 7y ago> * China, especially a few decades ago, was so poor that eminent domain was a complete non-issue* This is a really weird framing of a system without any private property where people who got in the way of the government where slaughtered by the millions. Yeah, it's improved immensely since 1989, but still. Let's not forget history. The killers are still alive.