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<Ms. Chen didn't respond to requests for comment via email and Facebook.> This reads as a tongue in cheek reminder that Facebook is blocked in China. < He app

<Ms. Chen didn't respond to requests for comment via email and Facebook.> This reads as a tongue in cheek reminder that Facebook is blocked in China. < He applied for a permit to tear down the century-old mansion and to build a new villa...> The seemingly prevalent distaste for old things continues to frustrate me. So much history and tradition cast aside. I'm disappointed the article dwelled almost entirely on Bo GuaGua after an opening that suggested a more diverse article. While the hypocrisy is particularly striking in China (due to it's stated values and recent history), I think the privilege of children belonging to wealthy and powerful families is well known to be a worldwide phenomenon. That said, the separation of rich and poor is painfully visible in China. Glowing shopping centers with carefully planned architecture and spotless windows stand directly across from tattered shops with merchants huddled amongst piles of cheap goods and street vendors selling stir fried noodles for less than 1 USD.

berntb 15y ago
>>The seemingly prevalent distaste for old things continues to frustrate me Sigh, I need to say this about old buildings... Sweden kept out of both world wars and that was an economic miracle for a previously very poor country. But despite not getting the cities destroyed by bombing (or street-to-street fighting), lots of old building and whole city centers were torn down in the 1950s and 1960s, to build new buildings. The whole country has sorely regretted it since then. Surviving old stone houses are generally really expensive. Please learn from other's stupidity, instead of repeating it; that is partly why our brains evolved to be big. Edit: Ah, that mansion wasn't even in China. Sorry for bothering.. :-)
- deleted 15y ago
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- jseliger 15y ago
  If you want to preserve old buildings, buy them and hold on to them. Prices depends on supply and demand: if you reduce the supply of something and hold demand constant or increase it, that thing becomes valuable. The problem with preserving "old" buildings through legal means it that doing so prevents new supply (which usually means "more units for an acre of land") from coming online, thus increasing housing costs altogether. See: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/a-tale-of-two-town-houses/6334/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/a-tale-o... and http://www.amazon.com/Gated-City-Kindle-Single-ebook/dp/B005KGATLO?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957 http://www.amazon.com/Gated-City-Kindle-Single-ebook/dp/B005... for more. I regret not being able to live in places like Boston and L.A. because poorly conceived preservation laws remove building rights from owners and prevent them from constructing dwellings I and many others might actually be able to afford.
  - berntb 15y ago
    The point was, it is a bit late to preserve old buildings in Sweden... :-) Re Boston/LA -- that is not relevant for Sweden either, since the biggest city is quite small (ca a million people), so there is space to be used, if it was handled well. (It isn't, but that is another story.)
simcop2387 15y ago
While I know this isn't the biggest case, sometimes the building are torn down because they can't be fixed. I've watched more than one where I used to live in NC be unable to be fixed for any reasonable amount of cost. Some of them on the order of 100 years old costing 400k+ to fix (while keeping the house historically intact) because of rotting beams and other termite damage. Now even given that, I really doubt that this was the case with him.

berntb 15y ago

>>The seemingly prevalent distaste for old things continues to frustrate me Sigh, I need to say this about old buildings... Sweden kept out of both world wars and that was an economic miracle for a previously very poor country. But despite not getting the cities destroyed by bombing (or street-to-street fighting), lots of old building and whole city centers were torn down in the 1950s and 1960s, to build new buildings. The whole country has sorely regretted it since then. Surviving old stone houses are generally really expensive. Please learn from other's stupidity, instead of repeating it; that is partly why our brains evolved to be big. Edit: Ah, that mansion wasn't even in China. Sorry for bothering.. :-)

deleted 15y ago
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jseliger 15y ago
If you want to preserve old buildings, buy them and hold on to them. Prices depends on supply and demand: if you reduce the supply of something and hold demand constant or increase it, that thing becomes valuable. The problem with preserving "old" buildings through legal means it that doing so prevents new supply (which usually means "more units for an acre of land") from coming online, thus increasing housing costs altogether. See: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/a-tale-of-two-town-houses/6334/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/a-tale-o... and http://www.amazon.com/Gated-City-Kindle-Single-ebook/dp/B005KGATLO?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957 http://www.amazon.com/Gated-City-Kindle-Single-ebook/dp/B005... for more. I regret not being able to live in places like Boston and L.A. because poorly conceived preservation laws remove building rights from owners and prevent them from constructing dwellings I and many others might actually be able to afford.
- berntb 15y ago
  The point was, it is a bit late to preserve old buildings in Sweden... :-) Re Boston/LA -- that is not relevant for Sweden either, since the biggest city is quite small (ca a million people), so there is space to be used, if it was handled well. (It isn't, but that is another story.)

simcop2387 15y ago

While I know this isn't the biggest case, sometimes the building are torn down because they can't be fixed. I've watched more than one where I used to live in NC be unable to be fixed for any reasonable amount of cost. Some of them on the order of 100 years old costing 400k+ to fix (while keeping the house historically intact) because of rotting beams and other termite damage. Now even given that, I really doubt that this was the case with him.