7 ms·

Recommendations from the first meeting of China’s urban policy unit in 38 years

56 points by okfine 7y ago

peter_l_downs 7y ago
> The new urbanisation guidelines encourage mixed-use development and recommend that all residents should have improved access to a diverse range of public and commercial amenities – schools, supermarkets, retirement centers, hospitals, parks, and cultural centers – within range of where they live. There is a special emphasis on green space: the guidelines decree that all city dwellers should have access to public parks, gardens, and other open areas. If they can pull this off – awesome.
- mytailorisrich 7y ago
  They have already tried to do that for years. Many housing developments consist of tower blocks surrounded by a garden, with the ground floors used for convenience stores, hair dressers, etc.
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    That’s not what the article is talking about. Not tower blocks, think more like Xuhui or Changning in Shanghai where you have tons of eight story or ten story apartment blocks with the first or first two floors of street facing buildings being small retail, and instead of super blocks that take twenty minutes to walk around, like in Pudong, ones more like in Paris or New York, much smaller. A perfect dense city looks like Brooklyn, Harlem or Paris, not like Pudong.
    - mytailorisrich 7y ago
      > A perfect dense city looks like Brooklyn, Harlem or Paris, not like Pudong. That's your opinion. These places are short of green spaces.
      - throw0101a 7y ago
        Then build more parks. But the "towers in the park" form of land use has been found not to work: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_in_the_park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_in_the_park
      - barry-cotter 7y ago
        Nothing remotely like Pudong or Puxi in Shanghai. I’m very fortunate to live within walking distance of two small parks in Changning and that is way better than most of Puxi. If you want to see a good example of urban planning look at Singapore. Everything appears to be a park, road, tree or building and there’s plenty of the first two. Whatever a perfect city looks like it does not look like Pudong or any of the rest of the last two decades of development in China with their super blocks, malls, residential gated communities with no retail and everything set up for cars.
        mytailorisrich 7y ago
        > If you want to see a good example of urban planning look at Singapore. Everything appears to be a park, road, tree or building and there’s plenty of the first two. I'm not disagreeing with that. This is very far from the examples you cited, and more in line with large buildings surrounded by parks that I mentioned. In fact Singapore has drawn on Le Corbusier's idea of "Unité d'habitation" (which I mentioned in another comment)...
        barry-cotter 7y ago
        Dense urban areas with mixed residential, commercial and retail spaces all within walking distance of each other are the antithesis of Le Corbusier’s vision of a perfect city. He would have been appalled by Singapore, if possibly less appalled than by Paris which he would have liked to raze to the ground and rebuild.
        mytailorisrich 7y ago
        Please, and for the last time, look at "unité d'habitation" and how it has inspired many developments in Singapore.
xvilka 7y ago
I guess we will see more skyscrapers then since more density is required.
- baybal2 7y ago
  The trick with density is all about making those skyscrapers occupied. The giant vacant housing inventories have not gone down much over the years. Cheap housing sells well, but giant mansion apartments that got trendy at around 2012-2015 are really unsellable, and there were really a lot of them built in urban centres. Believe me or not, Shanghai has few places with 10 years old "brand new" apartments.
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    Whatever about other parts of China I do not believe there are 10 year old developments in Shanghai with brand new apartments unless you mean people who are holding unfinished concrete shells as investments and there are some of those in central, lived in developments. Getting any place within ten minutes taxi ride of a metro occupied is easy. Might be hard to sell it but you can rent it easy.
    - baybal2 7y ago
      It is exactly what it is. 400m2+ apartments overloaded with styrofoam barocco decorations, appliances, furniture, ready for people to move in, just sitting there and rotting. I saw photos myself: plastic parts yellowing, styrofoam curlies cracking, organic materials getting mouldy here and there, and centimetre thick layer of dust on everything. When they were put on the market 10 years ago, they were sold at such unimaginable, even for China, markups that even multimillionaires would've not gone for them. It was clear that the only buyers for them would've been some nouveau riche suckers. They will not find buyers these days anymore. The example above is still on the side of the extreme, but say 3-4 year old developments being 50% vacant is a norm for 200m2+ apartments.
      - barry-cotter 7y ago
ephemeralism 7y ago
Should probably add (2016) to the title.
dirtyid 7y ago
A few interesting claims by Yukon Huang, former World Bank director of China: In the last few years, CPC aims to equalize urbanization growth and have set internal migration to limit tier1 cities growth. However in reality, major Chinese cities are less dense than comparable tier1 cities elsewhere. Major urban centres density in particular have decreased 20% in the last 10 years. I believe this accounts for the substantial number of shadow migrants. Minor Chinese cities are much more dense than comparable cities elsewhere. Apparently traffic planning is done by the military in major cities, there's a conspicuous absence of one way streets and other planning blunders leading to congestion. I'm not sure if it's blunders or prioritization different goals, after all regardless of who plans, there are competent traffic engineers working at the highest level. China's airspace is also largely planned by the military and constrained to extremely narrow flight corridors leading to all sorts of inefficiencies and widespread delay. Hence popularity of high speed rail. Regardless there's still a lot of urban optimizations to be made. He is one of the few that thinks large Chinese cities should be larger. It would be interesting to see how China implements these new urban policies with constraints of existing urban development. Wonder if they'll run into the same development woes as other large cities. On the other hand Chinese superblocks are sufficiently large and dense that they should easily sustain mix-use revitalization. Selfishly just waiting for some movement on arcologies.
- baybal2 7y ago
  Indeed, he restates a common notion: Chinese cities are not dense and big enough. Chinese policymaking is a very strong echo chamber even among the few nominally independent technocrats.
  - bobthepanda 7y ago
    That’s not current policy though; Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen are trying to cap their populations. Current policy is to urbanize the western regions to reduce regional imbalances.
    - baybal2 7y ago
      I meant exactly this. A common saying among the establishment is that Chinese cities "got too big," when in reality the issue is the opposite. At least in Shenzhen, the officials are split in 2 camps. One is all about importing more workers to keep the industry going, another is for turning Shenzhen more into a Dubai for rich kids.
Kapura 7y ago
>The new guidelines also emphasise the need for a diverse mix of public transportation options, including light rail, buses, and subways. Not surprising at all, but I didn't know what they mentioned next: >Although China [...] is working to build over 7,000km of new subway lines in cities across the country by 2020 As somebody living in the U.S. this has me absolutely floored. I'm feeling some extreme transit envy.
Merrill 7y ago
>The new urbanisation guidelines encourage mixed-use development and recommend that all residents should have improved access to a diverse range of public and commercial amenities – schools, supermarkets, retirement centers, hospitals, parks, and cultural centers – within range of where they live. There is a special emphasis on green space: the guidelines decree that all city dwellers should have access to public parks, gardens, and other open areas. This portrays the city as only a residential entity with residential amenities. Where are the productive uses of land, such as factories, refineries, shipyards, office buildings, warehouses, food markets, etc. that are needed for a thriving economy. "Mixed use" should account for placing places of employment in proximity to residential areas so that transportation costs and time consumed by commuting are reduced. Or are cities to be exclusively centers of consumption?
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  Mixed use employment areas don‘t really reduce commuting time, especially if you have a multiple income household where people work in different areas. Tokyo is extremely mixed use and still has long commute times.

56 points by okfine 7y ago

peter_l_downs 7y ago

mytailorisrich 7y ago
They have already tried to do that for years. Many housing developments consist of tower blocks surrounded by a garden, with the ground floors used for convenience stores, hair dressers, etc.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  That’s not what the article is talking about. Not tower blocks, think more like Xuhui or Changning in Shanghai where you have tons of eight story or ten story apartment blocks with the first or first two floors of street facing buildings being small retail, and instead of super blocks that take twenty minutes to walk around, like in Pudong, ones more like in Paris or New York, much smaller. A perfect dense city looks like Brooklyn, Harlem or Paris, not like Pudong.
  - mytailorisrich 7y ago
    > A perfect dense city looks like Brooklyn, Harlem or Paris, not like Pudong. That's your opinion. These places are short of green spaces.
    - throw0101a 7y ago
      Then build more parks. But the "towers in the park" form of land use has been found not to work: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_in_the_park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_in_the_park
    - barry-cotter 7y ago
      Nothing remotely like Pudong or Puxi in Shanghai. I’m very fortunate to live within walking distance of two small parks in Changning and that is way better than most of Puxi. If you want to see a good example of urban planning look at Singapore. Everything appears to be a park, road, tree or building and there’s plenty of the first two. Whatever a perfect city looks like it does not look like Pudong or any of the rest of the last two decades of development in China with their super blocks, malls, residential gated communities with no retail and everything set up for cars.
      - mytailorisrich 7y ago
        > If you want to see a good example of urban planning look at Singapore. Everything appears to be a park, road, tree or building and there’s plenty of the first two. I'm not disagreeing with that. This is very far from the examples you cited, and more in line with large buildings surrounded by parks that I mentioned. In fact Singapore has drawn on Le Corbusier's idea of "Unité d'habitation" (which I mentioned in another comment)...
        barry-cotter 7y ago
        Dense urban areas with mixed residential, commercial and retail spaces all within walking distance of each other are the antithesis of Le Corbusier’s vision of a perfect city. He would have been appalled by Singapore, if possibly less appalled than by Paris which he would have liked to raze to the ground and rebuild.
        mytailorisrich 7y ago
        Please, and for the last time, look at "unité d'habitation" and how it has inspired many developments in Singapore.

xvilka 7y ago

I guess we will see more skyscrapers then since more density is required.

baybal2 7y ago
The trick with density is all about making those skyscrapers occupied. The giant vacant housing inventories have not gone down much over the years. Cheap housing sells well, but giant mansion apartments that got trendy at around 2012-2015 are really unsellable, and there were really a lot of them built in urban centres. Believe me or not, Shanghai has few places with 10 years old "brand new" apartments.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  Whatever about other parts of China I do not believe there are 10 year old developments in Shanghai with brand new apartments unless you mean people who are holding unfinished concrete shells as investments and there are some of those in central, lived in developments. Getting any place within ten minutes taxi ride of a metro occupied is easy. Might be hard to sell it but you can rent it easy.
  - baybal2 7y ago
    It is exactly what it is. 400m2+ apartments overloaded with styrofoam barocco decorations, appliances, furniture, ready for people to move in, just sitting there and rotting. I saw photos myself: plastic parts yellowing, styrofoam curlies cracking, organic materials getting mouldy here and there, and centimetre thick layer of dust on everything. When they were put on the market 10 years ago, they were sold at such unimaginable, even for China, markups that even multimillionaires would've not gone for them. It was clear that the only buyers for them would've been some nouveau riche suckers. They will not find buyers these days anymore. The example above is still on the side of the extreme, but say 3-4 year old developments being 50% vacant is a norm for 200m2+ apartments.
    - barry-cotter 7y ago

ephemeralism 7y ago

Should probably add (2016) to the title.

dirtyid 7y ago

A few interesting claims by Yukon Huang, former World Bank director of China: In the last few years, CPC aims to equalize urbanization growth and have set internal migration to limit tier1 cities growth. However in reality, major Chinese cities are less dense than comparable tier1 cities elsewhere. Major urban centres density in particular have decreased 20% in the last 10 years. I believe this accounts for the substantial number of shadow migrants. Minor Chinese cities are much more dense than comparable cities elsewhere. Apparently traffic planning is done by the military in major cities, there's a conspicuous absence of one way streets and other planning blunders leading to congestion. I'm not sure if it's blunders or prioritization different goals, after all regardless of who plans, there are competent traffic engineers working at the highest level. China's airspace is also largely planned by the military and constrained to extremely narrow flight corridors leading to all sorts of inefficiencies and widespread delay. Hence popularity of high speed rail. Regardless there's still a lot of urban optimizations to be made. He is one of the few that thinks large Chinese cities should be larger. It would be interesting to see how China implements these new urban policies with constraints of existing urban development. Wonder if they'll run into the same development woes as other large cities. On the other hand Chinese superblocks are sufficiently large and dense that they should easily sustain mix-use revitalization. Selfishly just waiting for some movement on arcologies.

baybal2 7y ago
Indeed, he restates a common notion: Chinese cities are not dense and big enough. Chinese policymaking is a very strong echo chamber even among the few nominally independent technocrats.
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  That’s not current policy though; Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen are trying to cap their populations. Current policy is to urbanize the western regions to reduce regional imbalances.
  - baybal2 7y ago
    I meant exactly this. A common saying among the establishment is that Chinese cities "got too big," when in reality the issue is the opposite. At least in Shenzhen, the officials are split in 2 camps. One is all about importing more workers to keep the industry going, another is for turning Shenzhen more into a Dubai for rich kids.

Kapura 7y ago

>The new guidelines also emphasise the need for a diverse mix of public transportation options, including light rail, buses, and subways. Not surprising at all, but I didn't know what they mentioned next: >Although China [...] is working to build over 7,000km of new subway lines in cities across the country by 2020 As somebody living in the U.S. this has me absolutely floored. I'm feeling some extreme transit envy.

Merrill 7y ago

>The new urbanisation guidelines encourage mixed-use development and recommend that all residents should have improved access to a diverse range of public and commercial amenities – schools, supermarkets, retirement centers, hospitals, parks, and cultural centers – within range of where they live. There is a special emphasis on green space: the guidelines decree that all city dwellers should have access to public parks, gardens, and other open areas. This portrays the city as only a residential entity with residential amenities. Where are the productive uses of land, such as factories, refineries, shipyards, office buildings, warehouses, food markets, etc. that are needed for a thriving economy. "Mixed use" should account for placing places of employment in proximity to residential areas so that transportation costs and time consumed by commuting are reduced. Or are cities to be exclusively centers of consumption?

bobthepanda 7y ago
Mixed use employment areas don‘t really reduce commuting time, especially if you have a multiple income household where people work in different areas. Tokyo is extremely mixed use and still has long commute times.