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Chongqing seems incredible on pictures and YouTube videos. No doubt it's a comfortable place to live for many people, and surely it isn't perfect, especially wh

by kubb 1y ago

Chongqing seems incredible on pictures and YouTube videos. No doubt it's a comfortable place to live for many people, and surely it isn't perfect, especially when it comes to things like air pollution. What amazes me is China's capacity to do development on a large scale, something that's completely missing in Europe. If we had efficient large-scale construction solved, we could really put a dent in the cost of living crisis, and reverse the overcrowding of the existing urban centers.

whatever1 1y ago
The cost of housing in the large Chinese megacities is comparable to, if not higher than, that in Western countries. Therefore, they are not constructing housing at a fast enough pace to meet their population’s needs. However, they do build at a rate that is 2-4 times faster than that of Western countries.
- dan-robertson 1y ago
  What does ‘comparable’ mean? Is it about ratios between incomes and costs? Or cost of the same apartment in two places? Or something else?
  - markus_zhang 1y ago
    Cost/income is a good ratio. The megacities (Shanghai, Shenzhen etc.) probably have a ratio similar to New York. Just from top of my head as I left Shanghai 10 years ago, a typical condo in Shanghai could cost over 5 million yuan (urban but definitely not core city), while a salary of 300k pre-tax is considered as a good salary. On the other side, housing is affordable for locals -- locals usually got very generous compensation from the demolition of their original home.
  - chgs 1y ago
    Median monthly cost in terms of median take home pay would be the sensible comparison. This would exclude ex-pats.
- yusaydat 1y ago
  The prices depend on the city, apartments in Chongqing cost around $1,000 USD per m², about 1/5th of the prices in cities like Beijing and Shanghai.
- screye 1y ago
  Chinese housing demand is a unique beast. Chinese citizens do not see stocks as a stable investment, so housing becomes the main type of investment. Housing domicile rules (Hukou system) give special rights to homeowners which incentivizes housing purchase instead of renting. As a result, housing prices are proportionally higher in China than in the US. There is a gold-like intangibility to it. If China also had NIMBYs alongside this system, their houses would've easily risen to the most expensive in the world.
- maxglute 1y ago
  > they are not constructing housing at a fast enough pace to meet their population’s needs It's more accurate to say PRC/CCP understood it's _impossible_ to build enough housing in Tier1 cities where everyone wants to be, the supply/demand curve will never make sense outside of micro/small countries where everyone can fit in a handful of cities. Can't fit 1 billion people in Beijing/Shanghai/Guahzhou/Shenzhen etc, need 30/40/50 cities that are almost as enticing. What PRC is constructing "fast enough" pace are entirely new cities / developing shitholes into T2/T3 alternatives to shift demand away from T1/T2s. IMO that's the real lesson west needs to learn but can't due to lack of hukou / internal migration controls - spreading out desirable urban areas because talent / productive centres tends to agglomerate ala zipf's law, which Chinese development patterns does not follow. IIRC 10-15 years ago, there were ongoing academic debate about PRC's urban density (or lack of due due to sunlight planning laws), and how PRC could be more competitive if it doubled density in T1 cities, but central gov said no, better build more desirable, low CoL cities (especially inland / poorer regions) where _most_ of population can distribute vs hammer T1 further into unsustainability.
- HDThoreaun 1y ago
  Chinese housing is a unique situation. Because the government owns everything the chinese stock market kind of sucks. Without equities to invest in the chinese look for alternate investments. Real estate became the main instrument. China has the issue that you'll here leftists in the US claim exists, too many units being kept vacant by investors.
moomin 1y ago
The thing is, we used to do this. Walk around London or Florence or Rome and you will see era-adjusted sights that are equally impressive. For that matter, go check out Blenheim Palace. It’s a reasonable question to ask: What happened? But the answer is prosaic. These sights all come from times of _incredible_ inequality. Which you don’t see in these pictures but is vastly more relevant to the day to day lives of most citizens. Show me a place that looks like that where no-one goes hungry, has to worry about medical bills and doesn’t live in fear of the rich and powerful and then I’ll be impressed.
- dan-robertson 1y ago
  I mean, people go hungry today in plenty of places that fail to build (the U.K. for example) and they went hungry or lived in fear of the powerful in plenty of places before they were able to build at impressive scales. I’m not sure if it’s what you are thinking of, but I don’t think the massive expansion of cities in the Industrial Revolution was caused by incredible inequality (unless you count inequality between urban and rural areas?). I guess you could be thinking of ‘monuments’ built by the rich and saying they are due to inequality but I would think the analogue to Chongqing would be the constructing of the ‘megacities’ of the past, which is mostly about building lots of residential, industrial, and office space rather than palaces.
- kubb 1y ago
  I think it’s a misread to attribute large-scale construction mainly to inequality. While inequality funded grand projects historically, today it’s effective planning, strong state capacity, and streamlined execution that make the real difference. China’s development is impressive because it prioritizes coordination and scale, whereas Europe struggles more with political and organizational fragmentation and lack of initiative.
  - yorwba 1y ago
    The strong state capacity collects the resources of large areas and concentrates them into large-scale construction projects in a handful of places. China has a small number of megacities with large, wealthy, modern urban cores and a very large population that lives somewhere else. There are about a hundred cities with more than a million inhabitants but only 47 have urban rail transit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_rail_transit_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_rail_transit_in_China That's inequality.
pydry 1y ago
Europe and America have no industrial strategy to speak of and powerful lobbies dedicated to perpetuating the war on affordable housing. I doubt this is something that can or will be reversed gradually. The consolidation of oligarchic power has been building up over many decades and only shows signs of acceleration. In order for the power structures responsible for this to be overturned something pretty cataclysmic will need to happen - losing a large scale war, economic collapse, etc. (e.g. like in post WW2 Japan where America dismantled and disenfranchised the Japanese oligarchy).
- markus_zhang 1y ago
  A new cold war might help. If that happens any oligarchy with half a brain would have to give back some pies to the ordinary people.
  - deeThrow94 1y ago
    For second place, maybe. China is largely out of our grasp without our committing pretty extreme crimes against humanity. Granted, we were fine with that with the first cold war, maybe we'll find the appetite again.
    - markus_zhang 1y ago
      We don't need crimes against humanity. We just need more pies from the oligarchs so that we can bring back reasonable housing, some sort of manufacturing and more R&D. But granted maybe most of them have less than half of a brain once they need to sacrifice the pies.
yapyap 1y ago
> What amazes me is China's capacity to do development on a large scale, something that's completely missing in Europe. If we had efficient large-scale construction solved, we could really put a dent in the cost of living crisis, and reverse the overcrowding of the existing urban centers. Because China has their singular government system (one party dictatorship, whatever you want to call it) they can make really quick decisions. In democratic countries there is a lot of hemming and hawing cause you need everyone or a majority to agree with you, in China or North Korea they just snap their fingers and the project has to start within a few weeks or months.
- surajrmal 1y ago
  After seeing what happens when the president tries to unilaterally enact orders without great care for ramifications, it's definitely more appealing to me that we tend to go slowly. I do feel like there must be a middle ground that's yet to be discovered though.
  - fakedang 1y ago
    Well the Chinese don't do things unilaterally. The only difference being deliberations being conducted in the Politburo by technocrats vs deliberations being conducted within the White House by untrained yesmen.
- screye 1y ago
  In defense of democracy, this issue was less prevalent until the last 30 years. You don't need everyone to agree on things in a democracy. The issue is lack of leadership and unclear power hierarchy (who matters- house, senate, president, state, or courts). Democracies with clarity function well. Switzerland leans into state rights, and each canton operates with little federal overhead. The Indian president and senate are weak. The power of civil litigation is limited. So, if you win the states and the house, then you can get a lot done. The Indian house has a full majority and is in the middle of a building boom. Hell, the US built the entire interstate system in a democracy. IMO, the US's problem is disproportional optics. On paper, the House> president > Senate> courts. But media attention is towards courts > president > senate > house. Roe v Wade was the biggest story of last year, but on paper, the House could've made a bipartisan decision that completely overrode the courts. People are most interested in Presidential elections, but the president has little power. So you end up in a lame-duck Obamacare-style compromise or a Trump-style tariff tantrum. People democratically voted for the president. But turns out, that's not the person who holds power. The house is supposed to be all powerful, but can't pass a single bill. That's how you get wonky policies smuggled through the only unlock unblockable bill. (Budget) Democracies like any system can fail. At least with democracies, the bad outcome is that nothing gets done. In authoritarian, you get famine, genocide, or coups. Hot take, but the US should get rid of the senate and limit the power of civic litigation. House introduces the bill, President signs it. Courts step in if the bill is illegal. No filibuster, promote simple majorities.
zkmon 1y ago
The lack of capacity to build in Europe is due to age-old regulations, bureaucracy and very low risk appetite. All this has affected human competence as well, similar to caged animals losing their abilities.
- kmac_ 1y ago
  I live in the EU and actually like that citizens are more important than businesses. I wish some construction laws were more strictly regulated, such as those concerning housing development. For example, in Poland, a lack of strict regulation has caused horrible new housing plans with insufficient parking spaces for apartments. There are plenty of similar examples.
  - 1270018080 1y ago
    In this context, the “business” is… housing and infrastructure for people to live in and use? And don’t forget the bigger picture. Businesses are jobs. When a country makes it so hostile for business that most can’t even operate there, that’s wages and tax revenue lost. The above is how Poland ends up with average apartments 8x the average wage. I don’t even want to get into the issues with prioritizing cars above people. That’s a whole other topic outside of this.
aprilthird2021 1y ago
> What amazes me is China's capacity to do development on a large scale, something that's completely missing in Europe. In the US, especially with renewed appetite for "America First" and bringing back good paying jobs for American laborers, there should be a lot more building of infrastructure and housing units around our country... Why can China do this and we can't even when the government has won a mandate from people to empower domestic labor (for everyone who says China can only do this because of wealth inequality)?
- deeThrow94 1y ago
  Because of the national mandate that Big Government Is Bad that happened 40 years ago, as best I can piece together.
- mminer237 1y ago
  Isn't good-paying domestic labor the main part of the problem? Hiring thousands of manual laborers at $5/hour is a lot more economical than at $15/hour plus $5/hr in benefits. And that applies to the steel workers and lumberjacks and fixture manufacturers who all have to be paid more too via material costs.
- cosmicgadget 1y ago
  What is the administration's infrastructure plan other than to fire a large portion of people who support it at the federal level?
yusaydat 1y ago
Lots of low-quality construction work though. Anecdotally, I used to live in a 30-story building in one of the special economic zones. My building had horrendously large cracks in the concrete, and even though I knew rationally that it wouldn't come down, it didn't feel safe, especially during typhoons, etc.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  Reminds me of this (from 2009): http://blog.pucp.edu.pe/blog/wp-content/uploads/sites/109/2009/07/Colapso-en-Shanghai.pdf http://blog.pucp.edu.pe/blog/wp-content/uploads/sites/109/20...
- stickfigure 1y ago
  > even though I knew rationally that it wouldn't come down How do you know that?
- ninininino 1y ago
  Tofu-dreg construction, or 豆腐渣工程 in Mandarin. A lot of new-builds literally rusting, falling apart, collapsing, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tofu-dreg_project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tofu-dreg_project Of course, many builds are fine too.
LetMeLogin 1y ago
I was there about 12 years ago, and in all honesty, I wasn't impressed. The air pollution was absolutely horrific, for whole I was there I wasn't able to see the sun at all due to air or lack of it. "Green" trees were just... grey, covered with all the dust. And good luck if you want to grab a taxi and you have long hair :) The food was great, though.
- RadiozRadioz 1y ago
  > And good luck if you want to grab a taxi and you have long hair Please explain
  - LetMeLogin 1y ago
    Pretty much when I tried to grab a taxi, and it was pretty much every day two times, I could see Taxi were free(no people inside, and now I can't remember if I was the light on or off, but meaning they're just free to take you) no one would stop for about 10 minutes. Sometimes 1 passed and I was able to get it, but usually it was 5-7 cars passing me by.... Someone mentioned people were not accustomed to males with long hair.
    - ammo1662 1y ago
      The vast majority of Chinese people use Didi or other Apps to call taxis. Those vacant taxis you notice are likely en route to collect their pre-booked passengers. Nowadays, hardly anyone flags down taxis on the roadside anymore - even Chinese citizens find it challenging to get a cab this way. Admittedly, this situation creates difficulties for elderly individuals unfamiliar with smartphones, who mostly depend on family or friends to arrange transportation for them.
      - LetMeLogin 1y ago
        That was 2012/2013, Didi wasn’t there at the time.
- hardwaregeek 1y ago
em-bee 1y ago
vienna is doing it. there is a new neighborhood built from scratch on a green field. literally. a 20 year project for 25.000 residents and 20.000 jobs. just a few decades ago it was all farmland (and an unused airfield). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seestadt_Aspern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seestadt_Aspern
- kubb 1y ago
  I love it, and why doesn't every city do that.
  - q3k 1y ago
    Because of a pervasive meme that only the private sector should be doing this.
    - HDThoreaun 1y ago
      The US built huge projects just like this. I know most about chicago, we built a 15,000 person neighborhood in 1942 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini%E2%80%93Green_Homes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini%E2%80%93Green_Homes. It became one of the most lawless places in the country. Now it has been torn down. Same story happened 5 different times in this city alone, theyve all been torn down too. Not saying public housing cant work here, but it certainly didnt.
      - em-bee 1y ago
        the problem here is building only public housing, and the way the US handles public housing. vienna doesn't build just public housing. seestadt in particular is not public housing. the city does the planning, and private developers compete for specific projects that they fund themselves. and they don't compete on cost but on design that makes for a livable city. so developers don't just get to build what they think makes them the most profit disregarding everything else. the city does contribute to the funding, but that happens with every development in the city anywhere because by city law 2/3rd of all new development must be subsidized with controlled rent. but that is still not public housing like in the US. the failure of the US project is that it is segregating poor people. vienna doesn't do that. subsidized housing is mixed in. every building has some subsidized apartments among freely financed ones, and also, while you need to qualify by income to get a subsidized apartment, you are allowed to stay even if your income rises.
hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
It’s missing in most European places because there’s little need for it. When there is a need, Europe does pretty well. At least relative to the U.S. For example, Europe built the completely novel floodgates for Venice. It’s been very successful as far as I’m aware when it was heavily doubted before and throughout its development. On the other hand, the U.S. won’t even contemplate building something similar to protect NYC, despite the fact that Europe has already done it and proven the concept, and that the region this would protect is orders of magnitude more economically valuable than Venice. Similarly consider high speed rail. Italy completely revolutionized domestic travel by setting up excellent high speed rail over a few years. They did it not by government fiat but intelligent regulations paired with privatization and market rules. While it’s not China scale, it’s more than sufficient for Italy’s scale. At the same time the U.S. is completely incapable of creating high speed rail and to the extent it has its done so by redefining it down.
- angled 1y ago
  To me, it’s better to compare China with India. Similar populations, yet the effects of different systems of government are extremely obvious.
  - graemep 1y ago
    Both have large populations, but have entirely different histories and cultures and economies. Thailand, the UK, and Tanzania have similar populations, that does not mean they are useful comparisons. What about Sri Lanka and Australia, or Syria and Taiwan?
    - HDThoreaun 1y ago
      The dialectic is only valuable when comparing things that arent the same. the difference in their economy is the point, the difference in their history is how they got here.
  - 124123 1y ago
    They are only similar in size. Do you mean that size is the only factor when doing operating a government ?
thenthenthen 1y ago
I would not consider CQ comfortable. Shanghai is 1000x more comfortable.
- alwa 1y ago
  What criteria do you consider when you think about comfort in this sense? The (always-credulous) Guardian seems to go based on photogenic shopping centers/bars and raw square footage: “A flat in Chongqing costs a seventh of what it would cost in Beijing or Shanghai and is twice as big.” Presumably your criteria might be more subtle?
  - thenthenthen 1y ago
    CQ: The weather is quite extreme, getting around is pretty hard, the crazy amount of tourist during the Holidays is overwhelming, the wages are lower, less job opportunities. Shanghai is flat, weather is moderate sea climate, food from all over the world, as well as bars, the highest amount of coffeeshops in the world (not really my thing) but most importantly, walkable, whilst CQ is more… hikeable…
- dheera 1y ago
  Chongqing has better food.
thelastgallon 1y ago
Because the western world (and rest of the world following western world) has one rule (the only rule): make the super rich richer, everything else is just marketing to accomplish that. Home prices are completely out of reach for most people in UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia (coming soon to a country near you!). You're overpaying to live like a 1920's postman: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tGPHcteG9dY https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tGPHcteG9dY Create artificial scarcity (by zoning, monopolies, regulatory capture), buy assets (never have to improve any assets because there is no competition, no functional market of competitors producing better housing), extract wealth forever by maximizing rents and asset prices.
- SamPatt 1y ago
  Housing shortages aren't a result of some nefarious plot to make the super rich richer. It's more complex than that. We need to build more housing, and there are various reasons why that isn't happening. Many of them are well-intentioned and even good (high safety standards dramatically increase the cost of new buildings).
  - graemep 1y ago
    The main reason for high prices is not shortages, its low interest rates.
    - GoatInGrey 1y ago
      It's remarkable to see how intuitive supply and demand laws are for many individuals until it comes to one particular market: housing.
      - graemep 1y ago
        Are you being sarcastic? Housing is a good example of how people fail to understand supply and demand. People usually talk as though supply and demand are fixed quantities rather than curves against price.
    - 1y ago
graemep 1y ago
> No doubt it's a comfortable place to live for many people, It does not look very comfortable to me. Lots of huge residential tower blocks, one that has a metro line running THROUGH it, a bookshop with shelves that are not reachable. All those in a curated set of pictures!
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
apexalpha 1y ago
The Netherlands grew by 1 million people between 2015 and 2025, roughly 6,5% increase in population. And (almost) everyone has a house. Except we don't build flats and suburban one-house-fits-all massive construction projects. We mostly do smallscale development times a 1000, in stead of one big one. We think it results in better cities. Though, it is true we should build even more.
- alephnan 1y ago
  > And (almost) everyone has a house. How come the Netherlands has the most pronounced housing shortage for university students compared to other countries ? Is it because everyone is AirBnb'ing their first and second homes out to tourists? It's so bad that international students are forced to decline university and graduate school offers. I know because I am in that boat. https://nltimes.nl/2025/04/22/housing-shortage-netherlands-reach-453000-2027-experts-warn https://nltimes.nl/2025/04/22/housing-shortage-netherlands-r... https://www.goinconnect.com/success-stories/the-student-housing-crisis-in-the-netherlands-how-the-hague-university-of-applied-sciences-is-supporting-international-students#:~:text=According%20to%20a%20report%20by,for%20the%20international%20student%20population. https://www.goinconnect.com/success-stories/the-student-hous...
  - apexalpha 1y ago
    Housing in the Netherlands is complex, it's not a free market. Out of a total of ~8 million homes: - 4.6 million are owned by the people who live in them. - 2.3 million are owned by social housing corporations. You have to join a waitlist for these, you can't outbid someone. And then lastly: - 1 million houses are "free rentals". But this means they are open to anyone, they are still rent-controlled. You, together with all other international people, as well as many Dutch people who can't buy and also aren't eligible for social housing are playing musical chairs with only ~13% of the total housing in our country.
- kubb 1y ago
  Apparently you have a housing shortage of 400k homes, rents increase 5% YoY, and residents spend more than 20% of their income on housing. Your cities are great though, I love the Netherlands.
idiotsecant 1y ago
The more critical things that China is doing well is infrastructure. They have DC transmission networks, solar, and hydro at a scale unheard of in the rest of the world. They're depositing into a savings account right now that will pay them massive dividends for a century or more. They're making the investment that made the US a world superpower that we are no longer willing to make at scale. It's a matter of time until China is the world hegemony. I don't know what that looks like for the world, but it's certainly bad for the US. If the populist politicians currently in charge of the US were actually interested in the public good they would be pouring money into works projects the likes of which haven't been seen in almost a century here in the US.
deIeted 1y ago
1) you don't even know what the cause of cost of living is 2) you have no idea what you are talking about

by kubb 1y ago

whatever1 1y ago

The cost of housing in the large Chinese megacities is comparable to, if not higher than, that in Western countries. Therefore, they are not constructing housing at a fast enough pace to meet their population’s needs. However, they do build at a rate that is 2-4 times faster than that of Western countries.

dan-robertson 1y ago
What does ‘comparable’ mean? Is it about ratios between incomes and costs? Or cost of the same apartment in two places? Or something else?
- markus_zhang 1y ago
  Cost/income is a good ratio. The megacities (Shanghai, Shenzhen etc.) probably have a ratio similar to New York. Just from top of my head as I left Shanghai 10 years ago, a typical condo in Shanghai could cost over 5 million yuan (urban but definitely not core city), while a salary of 300k pre-tax is considered as a good salary. On the other side, housing is affordable for locals -- locals usually got very generous compensation from the demolition of their original home.
- chgs 1y ago
  Median monthly cost in terms of median take home pay would be the sensible comparison. This would exclude ex-pats.
yusaydat 1y ago
The prices depend on the city, apartments in Chongqing cost around $1,000 USD per m², about 1/5th of the prices in cities like Beijing and Shanghai.
screye 1y ago
Chinese housing demand is a unique beast. Chinese citizens do not see stocks as a stable investment, so housing becomes the main type of investment. Housing domicile rules (Hukou system) give special rights to homeowners which incentivizes housing purchase instead of renting. As a result, housing prices are proportionally higher in China than in the US. There is a gold-like intangibility to it. If China also had NIMBYs alongside this system, their houses would've easily risen to the most expensive in the world.
maxglute 1y ago
> they are not constructing housing at a fast enough pace to meet their population’s needs It's more accurate to say PRC/CCP understood it's _impossible_ to build enough housing in Tier1 cities where everyone wants to be, the supply/demand curve will never make sense outside of micro/small countries where everyone can fit in a handful of cities. Can't fit 1 billion people in Beijing/Shanghai/Guahzhou/Shenzhen etc, need 30/40/50 cities that are almost as enticing. What PRC is constructing "fast enough" pace are entirely new cities / developing shitholes into T2/T3 alternatives to shift demand away from T1/T2s. IMO that's the real lesson west needs to learn but can't due to lack of hukou / internal migration controls - spreading out desirable urban areas because talent / productive centres tends to agglomerate ala zipf's law, which Chinese development patterns does not follow. IIRC 10-15 years ago, there were ongoing academic debate about PRC's urban density (or lack of due due to sunlight planning laws), and how PRC could be more competitive if it doubled density in T1 cities, but central gov said no, better build more desirable, low CoL cities (especially inland / poorer regions) where _most_ of population can distribute vs hammer T1 further into unsustainability.
HDThoreaun 1y ago
Chinese housing is a unique situation. Because the government owns everything the chinese stock market kind of sucks. Without equities to invest in the chinese look for alternate investments. Real estate became the main instrument. China has the issue that you'll here leftists in the US claim exists, too many units being kept vacant by investors.

moomin 1y ago

The thing is, we used to do this. Walk around London or Florence or Rome and you will see era-adjusted sights that are equally impressive. For that matter, go check out Blenheim Palace. It’s a reasonable question to ask: What happened? But the answer is prosaic. These sights all come from times of _incredible_ inequality. Which you don’t see in these pictures but is vastly more relevant to the day to day lives of most citizens. Show me a place that looks like that where no-one goes hungry, has to worry about medical bills and doesn’t live in fear of the rich and powerful and then I’ll be impressed.

dan-robertson 1y ago
I mean, people go hungry today in plenty of places that fail to build (the U.K. for example) and they went hungry or lived in fear of the powerful in plenty of places before they were able to build at impressive scales. I’m not sure if it’s what you are thinking of, but I don’t think the massive expansion of cities in the Industrial Revolution was caused by incredible inequality (unless you count inequality between urban and rural areas?). I guess you could be thinking of ‘monuments’ built by the rich and saying they are due to inequality but I would think the analogue to Chongqing would be the constructing of the ‘megacities’ of the past, which is mostly about building lots of residential, industrial, and office space rather than palaces.
kubb 1y ago
I think it’s a misread to attribute large-scale construction mainly to inequality. While inequality funded grand projects historically, today it’s effective planning, strong state capacity, and streamlined execution that make the real difference. China’s development is impressive because it prioritizes coordination and scale, whereas Europe struggles more with political and organizational fragmentation and lack of initiative.
- yorwba 1y ago
  The strong state capacity collects the resources of large areas and concentrates them into large-scale construction projects in a handful of places. China has a small number of megacities with large, wealthy, modern urban cores and a very large population that lives somewhere else. There are about a hundred cities with more than a million inhabitants but only 47 have urban rail transit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_rail_transit_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_rail_transit_in_China That's inequality.

pydry 1y ago

Europe and America have no industrial strategy to speak of and powerful lobbies dedicated to perpetuating the war on affordable housing. I doubt this is something that can or will be reversed gradually. The consolidation of oligarchic power has been building up over many decades and only shows signs of acceleration. In order for the power structures responsible for this to be overturned something pretty cataclysmic will need to happen - losing a large scale war, economic collapse, etc. (e.g. like in post WW2 Japan where America dismantled and disenfranchised the Japanese oligarchy).

markus_zhang 1y ago
A new cold war might help. If that happens any oligarchy with half a brain would have to give back some pies to the ordinary people.
- deeThrow94 1y ago
  For second place, maybe. China is largely out of our grasp without our committing pretty extreme crimes against humanity. Granted, we were fine with that with the first cold war, maybe we'll find the appetite again.
  - markus_zhang 1y ago
    We don't need crimes against humanity. We just need more pies from the oligarchs so that we can bring back reasonable housing, some sort of manufacturing and more R&D. But granted maybe most of them have less than half of a brain once they need to sacrifice the pies.

yapyap 1y ago

> What amazes me is China's capacity to do development on a large scale, something that's completely missing in Europe. If we had efficient large-scale construction solved, we could really put a dent in the cost of living crisis, and reverse the overcrowding of the existing urban centers. Because China has their singular government system (one party dictatorship, whatever you want to call it) they can make really quick decisions. In democratic countries there is a lot of hemming and hawing cause you need everyone or a majority to agree with you, in China or North Korea they just snap their fingers and the project has to start within a few weeks or months.

surajrmal 1y ago
After seeing what happens when the president tries to unilaterally enact orders without great care for ramifications, it's definitely more appealing to me that we tend to go slowly. I do feel like there must be a middle ground that's yet to be discovered though.
- fakedang 1y ago
  Well the Chinese don't do things unilaterally. The only difference being deliberations being conducted in the Politburo by technocrats vs deliberations being conducted within the White House by untrained yesmen.
screye 1y ago
In defense of democracy, this issue was less prevalent until the last 30 years. You don't need everyone to agree on things in a democracy. The issue is lack of leadership and unclear power hierarchy (who matters- house, senate, president, state, or courts). Democracies with clarity function well. Switzerland leans into state rights, and each canton operates with little federal overhead. The Indian president and senate are weak. The power of civil litigation is limited. So, if you win the states and the house, then you can get a lot done. The Indian house has a full majority and is in the middle of a building boom. Hell, the US built the entire interstate system in a democracy. IMO, the US's problem is disproportional optics. On paper, the House> president > Senate> courts. But media attention is towards courts > president > senate > house. Roe v Wade was the biggest story of last year, but on paper, the House could've made a bipartisan decision that completely overrode the courts. People are most interested in Presidential elections, but the president has little power. So you end up in a lame-duck Obamacare-style compromise or a Trump-style tariff tantrum. People democratically voted for the president. But turns out, that's not the person who holds power. The house is supposed to be all powerful, but can't pass a single bill. That's how you get wonky policies smuggled through the only unlock unblockable bill. (Budget) Democracies like any system can fail. At least with democracies, the bad outcome is that nothing gets done. In authoritarian, you get famine, genocide, or coups. Hot take, but the US should get rid of the senate and limit the power of civic litigation. House introduces the bill, President signs it. Courts step in if the bill is illegal. No filibuster, promote simple majorities.

zkmon 1y ago

The lack of capacity to build in Europe is due to age-old regulations, bureaucracy and very low risk appetite. All this has affected human competence as well, similar to caged animals losing their abilities.

kmac_ 1y ago
I live in the EU and actually like that citizens are more important than businesses. I wish some construction laws were more strictly regulated, such as those concerning housing development. For example, in Poland, a lack of strict regulation has caused horrible new housing plans with insufficient parking spaces for apartments. There are plenty of similar examples.
- 1270018080 1y ago
  In this context, the “business” is… housing and infrastructure for people to live in and use? And don’t forget the bigger picture. Businesses are jobs. When a country makes it so hostile for business that most can’t even operate there, that’s wages and tax revenue lost. The above is how Poland ends up with average apartments 8x the average wage. I don’t even want to get into the issues with prioritizing cars above people. That’s a whole other topic outside of this.

aprilthird2021 1y ago

> What amazes me is China's capacity to do development on a large scale, something that's completely missing in Europe. In the US, especially with renewed appetite for "America First" and bringing back good paying jobs for American laborers, there should be a lot more building of infrastructure and housing units around our country... Why can China do this and we can't even when the government has won a mandate from people to empower domestic labor (for everyone who says China can only do this because of wealth inequality)?

deeThrow94 1y ago
Because of the national mandate that Big Government Is Bad that happened 40 years ago, as best I can piece together.
mminer237 1y ago
Isn't good-paying domestic labor the main part of the problem? Hiring thousands of manual laborers at $5/hour is a lot more economical than at $15/hour plus $5/hr in benefits. And that applies to the steel workers and lumberjacks and fixture manufacturers who all have to be paid more too via material costs.
cosmicgadget 1y ago
What is the administration's infrastructure plan other than to fire a large portion of people who support it at the federal level?

yusaydat 1y ago

Lots of low-quality construction work though. Anecdotally, I used to live in a 30-story building in one of the special economic zones. My building had horrendously large cracks in the concrete, and even though I knew rationally that it wouldn't come down, it didn't feel safe, especially during typhoons, etc.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
Reminds me of this (from 2009): http://blog.pucp.edu.pe/blog/wp-content/uploads/sites/109/2009/07/Colapso-en-Shanghai.pdf http://blog.pucp.edu.pe/blog/wp-content/uploads/sites/109/20...
stickfigure 1y ago
> even though I knew rationally that it wouldn't come down How do you know that?
ninininino 1y ago
Tofu-dreg construction, or 豆腐渣工程 in Mandarin. A lot of new-builds literally rusting, falling apart, collapsing, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tofu-dreg_project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tofu-dreg_project Of course, many builds are fine too.

LetMeLogin 1y ago

I was there about 12 years ago, and in all honesty, I wasn't impressed. The air pollution was absolutely horrific, for whole I was there I wasn't able to see the sun at all due to air or lack of it. "Green" trees were just... grey, covered with all the dust. And good luck if you want to grab a taxi and you have long hair :) The food was great, though.

RadiozRadioz 1y ago
> And good luck if you want to grab a taxi and you have long hair Please explain
- LetMeLogin 1y ago
  Pretty much when I tried to grab a taxi, and it was pretty much every day two times, I could see Taxi were free(no people inside, and now I can't remember if I was the light on or off, but meaning they're just free to take you) no one would stop for about 10 minutes. Sometimes 1 passed and I was able to get it, but usually it was 5-7 cars passing me by.... Someone mentioned people were not accustomed to males with long hair.
  - ammo1662 1y ago
    The vast majority of Chinese people use Didi or other Apps to call taxis. Those vacant taxis you notice are likely en route to collect their pre-booked passengers. Nowadays, hardly anyone flags down taxis on the roadside anymore - even Chinese citizens find it challenging to get a cab this way. Admittedly, this situation creates difficulties for elderly individuals unfamiliar with smartphones, who mostly depend on family or friends to arrange transportation for them.
    - LetMeLogin 1y ago
      That was 2012/2013, Didi wasn’t there at the time.
hardwaregeek 1y ago

em-bee 1y ago

vienna is doing it. there is a new neighborhood built from scratch on a green field. literally. a 20 year project for 25.000 residents and 20.000 jobs. just a few decades ago it was all farmland (and an unused airfield). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seestadt_Aspern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seestadt_Aspern

kubb 1y ago
I love it, and why doesn't every city do that.
- q3k 1y ago
  Because of a pervasive meme that only the private sector should be doing this.
  - HDThoreaun 1y ago
    The US built huge projects just like this. I know most about chicago, we built a 15,000 person neighborhood in 1942 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini%E2%80%93Green_Homes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini%E2%80%93Green_Homes. It became one of the most lawless places in the country. Now it has been torn down. Same story happened 5 different times in this city alone, theyve all been torn down too. Not saying public housing cant work here, but it certainly didnt.
    - em-bee 1y ago
      the problem here is building only public housing, and the way the US handles public housing. vienna doesn't build just public housing. seestadt in particular is not public housing. the city does the planning, and private developers compete for specific projects that they fund themselves. and they don't compete on cost but on design that makes for a livable city. so developers don't just get to build what they think makes them the most profit disregarding everything else. the city does contribute to the funding, but that happens with every development in the city anywhere because by city law 2/3rd of all new development must be subsidized with controlled rent. but that is still not public housing like in the US. the failure of the US project is that it is segregating poor people. vienna doesn't do that. subsidized housing is mixed in. every building has some subsidized apartments among freely financed ones, and also, while you need to qualify by income to get a subsidized apartment, you are allowed to stay even if your income rises.

hshdhdhj4444 1y ago

It’s missing in most European places because there’s little need for it. When there is a need, Europe does pretty well. At least relative to the U.S. For example, Europe built the completely novel floodgates for Venice. It’s been very successful as far as I’m aware when it was heavily doubted before and throughout its development. On the other hand, the U.S. won’t even contemplate building something similar to protect NYC, despite the fact that Europe has already done it and proven the concept, and that the region this would protect is orders of magnitude more economically valuable than Venice. Similarly consider high speed rail. Italy completely revolutionized domestic travel by setting up excellent high speed rail over a few years. They did it not by government fiat but intelligent regulations paired with privatization and market rules. While it’s not China scale, it’s more than sufficient for Italy’s scale. At the same time the U.S. is completely incapable of creating high speed rail and to the extent it has its done so by redefining it down.

angled 1y ago
To me, it’s better to compare China with India. Similar populations, yet the effects of different systems of government are extremely obvious.
- graemep 1y ago
  Both have large populations, but have entirely different histories and cultures and economies. Thailand, the UK, and Tanzania have similar populations, that does not mean they are useful comparisons. What about Sri Lanka and Australia, or Syria and Taiwan?
  - HDThoreaun 1y ago
    The dialectic is only valuable when comparing things that arent the same. the difference in their economy is the point, the difference in their history is how they got here.
- 124123 1y ago
  They are only similar in size. Do you mean that size is the only factor when doing operating a government ?

thenthenthen 1y ago

I would not consider CQ comfortable. Shanghai is 1000x more comfortable.

alwa 1y ago
What criteria do you consider when you think about comfort in this sense? The (always-credulous) Guardian seems to go based on photogenic shopping centers/bars and raw square footage: “A flat in Chongqing costs a seventh of what it would cost in Beijing or Shanghai and is twice as big.” Presumably your criteria might be more subtle?
- thenthenthen 1y ago
  CQ: The weather is quite extreme, getting around is pretty hard, the crazy amount of tourist during the Holidays is overwhelming, the wages are lower, less job opportunities. Shanghai is flat, weather is moderate sea climate, food from all over the world, as well as bars, the highest amount of coffeeshops in the world (not really my thing) but most importantly, walkable, whilst CQ is more… hikeable…
dheera 1y ago
Chongqing has better food.

thelastgallon 1y ago

Because the western world (and rest of the world following western world) has one rule (the only rule): make the super rich richer, everything else is just marketing to accomplish that. Home prices are completely out of reach for most people in UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia (coming soon to a country near you!). You're overpaying to live like a 1920's postman: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tGPHcteG9dY https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tGPHcteG9dY Create artificial scarcity (by zoning, monopolies, regulatory capture), buy assets (never have to improve any assets because there is no competition, no functional market of competitors producing better housing), extract wealth forever by maximizing rents and asset prices.

SamPatt 1y ago
Housing shortages aren't a result of some nefarious plot to make the super rich richer. It's more complex than that. We need to build more housing, and there are various reasons why that isn't happening. Many of them are well-intentioned and even good (high safety standards dramatically increase the cost of new buildings).
- graemep 1y ago
  The main reason for high prices is not shortages, its low interest rates.
  - GoatInGrey 1y ago
    It's remarkable to see how intuitive supply and demand laws are for many individuals until it comes to one particular market: housing.
    - graemep 1y ago
      Are you being sarcastic? Housing is a good example of how people fail to understand supply and demand. People usually talk as though supply and demand are fixed quantities rather than curves against price.
  - 1y ago

graemep 1y ago

> No doubt it's a comfortable place to live for many people, It does not look very comfortable to me. Lots of huge residential tower blocks, one that has a metro line running THROUGH it, a bookshop with shelves that are not reachable. All those in a curated set of pictures!

deleted 1y ago

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apexalpha 1y ago

The Netherlands grew by 1 million people between 2015 and 2025, roughly 6,5% increase in population. And (almost) everyone has a house. Except we don't build flats and suburban one-house-fits-all massive construction projects. We mostly do smallscale development times a 1000, in stead of one big one. We think it results in better cities. Though, it is true we should build even more.

alephnan 1y ago
> And (almost) everyone has a house. How come the Netherlands has the most pronounced housing shortage for university students compared to other countries ? Is it because everyone is AirBnb'ing their first and second homes out to tourists? It's so bad that international students are forced to decline university and graduate school offers. I know because I am in that boat. https://nltimes.nl/2025/04/22/housing-shortage-netherlands-reach-453000-2027-experts-warn https://nltimes.nl/2025/04/22/housing-shortage-netherlands-r... https://www.goinconnect.com/success-stories/the-student-housing-crisis-in-the-netherlands-how-the-hague-university-of-applied-sciences-is-supporting-international-students#:~:text=According%20to%20a%20report%20by,for%20the%20international%20student%20population. https://www.goinconnect.com/success-stories/the-student-hous...
- apexalpha 1y ago
  Housing in the Netherlands is complex, it's not a free market. Out of a total of ~8 million homes: - 4.6 million are owned by the people who live in them. - 2.3 million are owned by social housing corporations. You have to join a waitlist for these, you can't outbid someone. And then lastly: - 1 million houses are "free rentals". But this means they are open to anyone, they are still rent-controlled. You, together with all other international people, as well as many Dutch people who can't buy and also aren't eligible for social housing are playing musical chairs with only ~13% of the total housing in our country.
kubb 1y ago
Apparently you have a housing shortage of 400k homes, rents increase 5% YoY, and residents spend more than 20% of their income on housing. Your cities are great though, I love the Netherlands.

idiotsecant 1y ago

The more critical things that China is doing well is infrastructure. They have DC transmission networks, solar, and hydro at a scale unheard of in the rest of the world. They're depositing into a savings account right now that will pay them massive dividends for a century or more. They're making the investment that made the US a world superpower that we are no longer willing to make at scale. It's a matter of time until China is the world hegemony. I don't know what that looks like for the world, but it's certainly bad for the US. If the populist politicians currently in charge of the US were actually interested in the public good they would be pouring money into works projects the likes of which haven't been seen in almost a century here in the US.

deIeted 1y ago

1) you don't even know what the cause of cost of living is 2) you have no idea what you are talking about