7 ms·

Why haven't China's cities learned from America's mistakes?

67 points by saeranv 12y ago

wesleyy 12y ago
I don't think saying China didn't see and learn from the failing aspects of American city planning is fair or useful, especially when it comes to road planning. The Chinese and American culture on road use is completely different: (power/gas) scooters and (regular) bikes are extremely popular in Beijing, and Chinese drivers are generally much more aggressive. Because of this, most road users, including bikers, are capable of driving defensively against other road users. Most bikers/scooter-ers are already comfortable with weaving between cars on their commute. Would a segregated lane make commuting on smaller vehicles safer? Undoubtedly. Would it be necessary to incentivize biking over driving larger vehicles? Probably not. This, along with other problems, like an exponentially expanding middle class population that can suddenly afford vehicles, is only one of the many different challenges most western governments have not experienced, which China currently faces. It may be unfair to quickly jump to conclusions and simply say the Chinese have not learned from the history of urban planning by western countries, when there are very few references from which the Chinese government can draw on, for the unique problems that they are facing. TL;DR: Chinese urban centers have problems that cities in Western countries have not faced.
- Padding 12y ago
  > Would a segregated lane make commuting on smaller vehicles safer? Undoubtedly. Would it be necessary to incentivize biking over driving larger vehicles? Probably not. Because numbers on charts matter more than people on the streets being safe. This is sad.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  Gas scooters are illegal within the 5th ring road, the police just haven't cracked down recently so many people are getting daring again (it's a cycle). Beijing bikes don't go very fast, probably because the lanes are all choked by cars, though it was like this in the late 90s also when Beijing still had segregated bike lanes. Chinese urban planners are just uneducated people who got their jobs via guanxi, especially in a corrupt city like Beijing (Shanghai, Guangzhou are much better, of course).
doctorpangloss 12y ago
I think what this signals is not that there is something particularly backwards about China. Chinese suburban sprawl shows that no matter the style of governance or how markets deal with housing, it seems like people converge on the same poor urban planning practices. Or, you could interpret the similar mistakes as proof that real estate in America is dealt with in a way that's far from free. Texas, the heart of the mainstream right, is where much of the sprawl is. In the greatest irony, the strongly-left economist Paul Krugman is saying Texas has economically positive liberal housing laws.[1] Does the liberalization of housing law lead to sprawl? How could a place with top down bureaucracy like China produce the same outcome as right Texas with left-approved policy? It's all a big mess. Nobody has figured out modern living in an efficient way, I think. I don't think Paul Krugman, Rick Perry, San Francisco housing reform activists, San Francisco status-quo activists, AirBnb, etc. have the answers. The natural experiment in China shows radically different laws and market practices still lead to problems. No one has figured out an optimal idea for land ownership and housing. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/25/opinion/paul-krugman-wrong-way-nation.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/25/opinion/paul-krugman-wrong...
- towski 12y ago
  I agree, and I would argue that this type of development is more economic. People want cars because they will take you everywhere. Why are the futurists arguing for an outmoded dense city life, just so they can stare at their iPhones on the bus? Just look at the price of land or housing in dense areas and how they inevitably become centers for the wealthy.
- bluthru 12y ago
  >How could a place with top down bureaucracy like China produce the same outcome as right Texas with left-approved policy? Because they're both the product of private developers working on isolated blocks of land. Their concern is fast ROI, which doesn't coincide with what's good for quality of life or the long term.
- sampo 12y ago
  > Chinese suburban sprawl shows that no matter the style of governance or how markets deal with housing, it seems like people converge on the same poor urban planning practices. If China and America follow this route, that's only 2 examples, not a universal trend. In Europe the cities are much more walkable.
nichtich 12y ago
I've heard about failed city planning a lot, and I wonder is there a good example somewhere? like a booming city with more than 5 million population that have "good" city plan? which city is best in this regard?
- sampo 12y ago
  > I've heard about failed city planning a lot, and I wonder is there a good example somewhere? Cities with functional public transport and walkable neighborhoods: Tokyo, Seoul, London, New York City, Paris, Berlin. Maybe also Madrid and Singapore, but I don't know much about them. Edit: Maybe Osaka and Nagoya, too (I don't know much about them either). All these have over 5 million population.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - Alphasite_ 12y ago
    Singapore is excellently planned from what I can see. Dubai is another as well.
  - narag 12y ago
    Madrid has an excellent public transport net. I sold my car two years ago, no regrets. But there's also a lot of traffic.
  - WildUtah 12y ago
    Barcelona and Osaka are also well known for doing a good job at facing the challenges of developing a big city. Nagoya and Taipei have been mentioned to me as examples, too. Mexico City deals every day with the challenges of having grown very fast to 20 million before it became rich. New subway and BRT lines, infill development, upgrading properties, and progressive transit and construction planning keep the place getting better to live in and easier to get around every year. Phasing in pollution and emission regulations as they became affordable and regulating polluting industries out of the region step by step worked well, too. In spite of the famous chaos of Mexican government, Mexico City will soon mark thirty years of effective governance and planning, so it can be done. If Mexico can do it, China and the USA -- which are usually considered to be only somewhat worse governed than México -- could probably do it, too, someday.
martythemaniak 12y ago
The short, glib answer is "The same reason teenagers don't learn from their elders' mistakes". The longer answer is a combination of: - poor people want what rich people have. And if they can't afford the substance (private country estate), they'll still get the style (McMansion). They particularly want last generation's rich people's things, as this generation's rich people's things are have not gained widespread popularity. - suburban sprawl has low up-front costs with real costs coming in decades later, as North American suburbs are starting to experience today - suburbs offer a very seductive lifestyle proposition - the space and privacy of the country and the convenience of city life. In my experience they fail to deliver, offering the traffic and neighbours of the city, without the convenience of dense, walkable neighbourhoods, proximity to downtown and quick transit. - more privacy and space are quite nice.
- jlmendezbonini 12y ago
  >- suburban sprawl has low up-front costs with real costs coming in decades later, as North American suburbs are starting to experience today Would you mind elaborating more on this? More specifically about the cost the North American suburbs are starting to experience. thanks
  - hueving 12y ago
    Difficult to implement any kind of useful public transit that would obviate the need to drive everywhere.
    - jrapdx3 12y ago
      Well, of course not. I mean public transportation couldn't cover every section of a region, but it could serve major hubs well enough to reduce automotive use and reduce its downsides. For almost 40 years Portland Oregon has been developing light rail all over the metro region. Rail has been extended to the major districts within a 10 to 15 mile radius of downtown. (Which is a good share of the "spread" that the regional urban growth boundary allows.) MAX and street-car lines are heavily used but there are still many cars and traffic can be terrible. So I guess light rail/public transit are never the whole solution by themselves. Then again, what single modality is ever the "magic bullet" answer to enormously complex problems?
jrapdx3 12y ago
Interesting subject. If the question is "to sprawl or not to sprawl" (that is, urban sprawl), like most truly serious questions, there's no good solution. I live in Oregon, where we have strict urban grown boundaries. Here in Portland, light rail has been developing since the 1970's and still expanding. Bicycling is pushed by city leaders. "In-fill" housing is going up in most every part of town. Utopia? Not everyone thinks so. Sure "urban sprawl" is mostly avoided, and farmland is preserved. But road traffic is a nightmare, and the toll of increasing population density is palpable. Now there's talk of the undesirable effects of "vertical sprawl", a reaction to the ever-increasing height of new condo buildings and the like. There's a growing murmur of objection to the "canyon-like" landscape that many feel has a negative impact on urban quality of life. So here we are again, there are always trade-offs, which is less corrosive, suburban or vertical sprawl? Maybe it just goes to show, we can overdo any good thing.
- claudius 12y ago
  I think the key here would be to limit both – no buildings higher than ~6 stories (~30m) and a limit on urban boundaries, either enforced by land planning or economics. Standard mansion blocks of six stories still have a much higher population density than suburban sprawling single-family homes while avoiding some/all of the issues with too high a population density – two-lane roads are usually quite sufficient and the sun does reach the ground from time to time. See e.g. Berlin and Munich for (IMHO) decent examples of this.
  - Herbert2 12y ago
    I'm all for less sprawl but artificial limits like the ones you're describe would IMO only needlessly accelerate gentrification. For instance, it's very difficult to get a spot at a daycare in Munich, not because there isn't space in the system but because the city can't afford to hire staff that can afford to live in Munich.
reedlaw 12y ago
I live in Hangzhou and they are already addressing these problems. For example, there is a network of public bike stations. To use a bike, you make a 200 yuan deposit on a public transportation card. The first hour bike rental is free. After that it starts at 1 yuan for the second hour and goes up from there. The card also works for buses (a ride costs 2-4 yuan) using your available balance. After riding a bus, the free bike period is increased to 90 minutes. It's usually easy to find a bike and they are continuing to build new stations making it even more convenient. Cars are a problem because of the amount of traffic around the city center. To address that, the goverment mandated that private cars could only drive in the city once a week during weekday rush hour. New drivers can only get a license if they pay a hefty tax or win a lottery (only about 2% who enter win). These restrictions don't apply to electric vehicles. There is also a network of public electric cars that can be rented for personal use. They are about the size of Smart cars. The article points at the suburban sprawl starting to spread around cities like Shanghai. But what it doesn't mention is that most of these homes are super expensive or so far away as to require a lifestyle which most Chinese couldn't afford. Those who could afford these houses are likely to also be able to afford an even better lifestyle overseas. The middle-class can scarcely afford to buy a small apartment in China's top-tier cities. So I'm not too worried about Western-style sprawl taking over all of China.
- gurkendoktor 12y ago
  > I live in Hangzhou and they are already addressing these problems. For example, there is a network of public bike stations. Do people use these in your experience? I've noticed them pop up all over Germany and then Taiwan too, but I found it hard to spot anyone but tourists riding public bikes. I always wonder if these are simply prestige projects to impress green-minded citizens (like myself).
  - skrebbel 12y ago
    In the Netherlands, most train stations have a bike station like that, and it seems to be quite a success. 4 years ago, seeing someone on such an "OV-fiets" (public transit bike) was an oddity, now it's very common. Doing the last mile by bike beats buses and trams big time, IMO. No waiting, no sitting next to sweaty people, no thinking, planning - just go. It probably helps that biking is already a strong element of Dutch culture, but if I'm not mistaken the Chinese bike a lot too so I guess it could work just as well.
nkoren 12y ago
A very simplistic and skewed article. As per its usual modus operandi, China is pursuing all options simultaneously. Which means that in addition to building hideous sprawling automotive-dependent suburbs, they're building the largest and most sophisticated urban and regional rail system in the world, and pursuing initiatives such as the Chengdu car-free city (http://weburbanist.com/2013/02/11/car-free-city-china-builds-dense-metropolis-from-scratch/ http://weburbanist.com/2013/02/11/car-free-city-china-builds...) which are vastly more progressive than anything the rest of the world has attempted. Portland is a great city by American standards, but its public transit mode-share for all trips in the metropolitan region still hovers around 4% -- with an additional ~2% coming from cycles -- making Portland ~94% dependent on private cars. (Note: you'll see statistics claiming a much higher mode share for Portland; this is done by excluding the other municipalities which account for >70% of the population in the metropolitan region, as well as by excluding the >60% of trips that are non-commuting trips). China is already doing much better than that, so it would be a shame if Portland were its target.
thorin 12y ago
The main problem I have here in the UK is that I live in a suburban area but have excellent train, bus, tram, road links into our nearest city and several other local cities. Every job I've expressed an interest in recently has an office outside of the main centre, normally near a major road junction. This makes the office inaccessible by public transport and much easier to get to by car. These are IT jobs in different industry sectors: retail, defence, finance, utilities etc. I suppose this is due to the price of land and availability of office space out of town. There is no incentive for most of these companies to be in a city centre. This is the major reason I'm likely to continue to drive to work. At the right time of day it takes 20 mins to drive, proabably over 1.5 hours by public transport - a mixture of train, bus, walk and much more expensive. How dissappointing! Of course this isn't an issue in London, I'm talking about provincial towns and cities.
coldcode 12y ago
To quote poet Carl Sandberg - "The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on." The problem is that screwing up the environment can happen so slowly that by the time you start to realize how bad it is to may be too late.
jpatokal 12y ago
There's one aspect where China has well and truly learned from America's mistakes: public transport. Every Chinese city of any importance has a metro system that's shiny new and heavily used. In 1993, the Shanghai Metro did not exist; today it's the world's longest, and by some measures the busiest. http://www.urbanrail.net/as/asia.htm http://www.urbanrail.net/as/asia.htm http://www.urbanrail.net/as/cn/shan/shanghai.htm http://www.urbanrail.net/as/cn/shan/shanghai.htm
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  But if you live in the suburbs and are just a car-less diaosi, you have your parents get up at 4am just to reserve a place for you in the bus line so you can make it to work by 8am (this is actually true for many places in Beijing, and some places in SH).
chiph 12y ago
I think it's because of Hollywood. They see the American TV shows and movies, and (slasher films aside) they show a happy suburban existence. And don't show hour-long commutes, the high cost of car ownership, etc.

67 points by saeranv 12y ago

I don't think saying China didn't see and learn from the failing aspects of American city planning is fair or useful, especially when it comes to road planning. The Chinese and American culture on road use is completely different: (power/gas) scooters and (regular) bikes are extremely popular in Beijing, and Chinese drivers are generally much more aggressive. Because of this, most road users, including bikers, are capable of driving defensively against other road users. Most bikers/scooter-ers are already comfortable with weaving between cars on their commute. Would a segregated lane make commuting on smaller vehicles safer? Undoubtedly. Would it be necessary to incentivize biking over driving larger vehicles? Probably not. This, along with other problems, like an exponentially expanding middle class population that can suddenly afford vehicles, is only one of the many different challenges most western governments have not experienced, which China currently faces. It may be unfair to quickly jump to conclusions and simply say the Chinese have not learned from the history of urban planning by western countries, when there are very few references from which the Chinese government can draw on, for the unique problems that they are facing. TL;DR: Chinese urban centers have problems that cities in Western countries have not faced.

Padding 12y ago
> Would a segregated lane make commuting on smaller vehicles safer? Undoubtedly. Would it be necessary to incentivize biking over driving larger vehicles? Probably not. Because numbers on charts matter more than people on the streets being safe. This is sad.
seanmcdirmid 12y ago
Gas scooters are illegal within the 5th ring road, the police just haven't cracked down recently so many people are getting daring again (it's a cycle). Beijing bikes don't go very fast, probably because the lanes are all choked by cars, though it was like this in the late 90s also when Beijing still had segregated bike lanes. Chinese urban planners are just uneducated people who got their jobs via guanxi, especially in a corrupt city like Beijing (Shanghai, Guangzhou are much better, of course).

doctorpangloss 12y ago

I think what this signals is not that there is something particularly backwards about China. Chinese suburban sprawl shows that no matter the style of governance or how markets deal with housing, it seems like people converge on the same poor urban planning practices. Or, you could interpret the similar mistakes as proof that real estate in America is dealt with in a way that's far from free. Texas, the heart of the mainstream right, is where much of the sprawl is. In the greatest irony, the strongly-left economist Paul Krugman is saying Texas has economically positive liberal housing laws.[1] Does the liberalization of housing law lead to sprawl? How could a place with top down bureaucracy like China produce the same outcome as right Texas with left-approved policy? It's all a big mess. Nobody has figured out modern living in an efficient way, I think. I don't think Paul Krugman, Rick Perry, San Francisco housing reform activists, San Francisco status-quo activists, AirBnb, etc. have the answers. The natural experiment in China shows radically different laws and market practices still lead to problems. No one has figured out an optimal idea for land ownership and housing. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/25/opinion/paul-krugman-wrong-way-nation.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/25/opinion/paul-krugman-wrong...

towski 12y ago
I agree, and I would argue that this type of development is more economic. People want cars because they will take you everywhere. Why are the futurists arguing for an outmoded dense city life, just so they can stare at their iPhones on the bus? Just look at the price of land or housing in dense areas and how they inevitably become centers for the wealthy.
bluthru 12y ago
>How could a place with top down bureaucracy like China produce the same outcome as right Texas with left-approved policy? Because they're both the product of private developers working on isolated blocks of land. Their concern is fast ROI, which doesn't coincide with what's good for quality of life or the long term.
sampo 12y ago
> Chinese suburban sprawl shows that no matter the style of governance or how markets deal with housing, it seems like people converge on the same poor urban planning practices. If China and America follow this route, that's only 2 examples, not a universal trend. In Europe the cities are much more walkable.

nichtich 12y ago

I've heard about failed city planning a lot, and I wonder is there a good example somewhere? like a booming city with more than 5 million population that have "good" city plan? which city is best in this regard?

sampo 12y ago
> I've heard about failed city planning a lot, and I wonder is there a good example somewhere? Cities with functional public transport and walkable neighborhoods: Tokyo, Seoul, London, New York City, Paris, Berlin. Maybe also Madrid and Singapore, but I don't know much about them. Edit: Maybe Osaka and Nagoya, too (I don't know much about them either). All these have over 5 million population.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- Alphasite_ 12y ago
  Singapore is excellently planned from what I can see. Dubai is another as well.
- narag 12y ago
  Madrid has an excellent public transport net. I sold my car two years ago, no regrets. But there's also a lot of traffic.
- WildUtah 12y ago
  Barcelona and Osaka are also well known for doing a good job at facing the challenges of developing a big city. Nagoya and Taipei have been mentioned to me as examples, too. Mexico City deals every day with the challenges of having grown very fast to 20 million before it became rich. New subway and BRT lines, infill development, upgrading properties, and progressive transit and construction planning keep the place getting better to live in and easier to get around every year. Phasing in pollution and emission regulations as they became affordable and regulating polluting industries out of the region step by step worked well, too. In spite of the famous chaos of Mexican government, Mexico City will soon mark thirty years of effective governance and planning, so it can be done. If Mexico can do it, China and the USA -- which are usually considered to be only somewhat worse governed than México -- could probably do it, too, someday.

martythemaniak 12y ago

The short, glib answer is "The same reason teenagers don't learn from their elders' mistakes". The longer answer is a combination of: - poor people want what rich people have. And if they can't afford the substance (private country estate), they'll still get the style (McMansion). They particularly want last generation's rich people's things, as this generation's rich people's things are have not gained widespread popularity. - suburban sprawl has low up-front costs with real costs coming in decades later, as North American suburbs are starting to experience today - suburbs offer a very seductive lifestyle proposition - the space and privacy of the country and the convenience of city life. In my experience they fail to deliver, offering the traffic and neighbours of the city, without the convenience of dense, walkable neighbourhoods, proximity to downtown and quick transit. - more privacy and space are quite nice.

jlmendezbonini 12y ago
>- suburban sprawl has low up-front costs with real costs coming in decades later, as North American suburbs are starting to experience today Would you mind elaborating more on this? More specifically about the cost the North American suburbs are starting to experience. thanks
- hueving 12y ago
  Difficult to implement any kind of useful public transit that would obviate the need to drive everywhere.
  - jrapdx3 12y ago
    Well, of course not. I mean public transportation couldn't cover every section of a region, but it could serve major hubs well enough to reduce automotive use and reduce its downsides. For almost 40 years Portland Oregon has been developing light rail all over the metro region. Rail has been extended to the major districts within a 10 to 15 mile radius of downtown. (Which is a good share of the "spread" that the regional urban growth boundary allows.) MAX and street-car lines are heavily used but there are still many cars and traffic can be terrible. So I guess light rail/public transit are never the whole solution by themselves. Then again, what single modality is ever the "magic bullet" answer to enormously complex problems?

jrapdx3 12y ago

Interesting subject. If the question is "to sprawl or not to sprawl" (that is, urban sprawl), like most truly serious questions, there's no good solution. I live in Oregon, where we have strict urban grown boundaries. Here in Portland, light rail has been developing since the 1970's and still expanding. Bicycling is pushed by city leaders. "In-fill" housing is going up in most every part of town. Utopia? Not everyone thinks so. Sure "urban sprawl" is mostly avoided, and farmland is preserved. But road traffic is a nightmare, and the toll of increasing population density is palpable. Now there's talk of the undesirable effects of "vertical sprawl", a reaction to the ever-increasing height of new condo buildings and the like. There's a growing murmur of objection to the "canyon-like" landscape that many feel has a negative impact on urban quality of life. So here we are again, there are always trade-offs, which is less corrosive, suburban or vertical sprawl? Maybe it just goes to show, we can overdo any good thing.

claudius 12y ago
I think the key here would be to limit both – no buildings higher than ~6 stories (~30m) and a limit on urban boundaries, either enforced by land planning or economics. Standard mansion blocks of six stories still have a much higher population density than suburban sprawling single-family homes while avoiding some/all of the issues with too high a population density – two-lane roads are usually quite sufficient and the sun does reach the ground from time to time. See e.g. Berlin and Munich for (IMHO) decent examples of this.
- Herbert2 12y ago
  I'm all for less sprawl but artificial limits like the ones you're describe would IMO only needlessly accelerate gentrification. For instance, it's very difficult to get a spot at a daycare in Munich, not because there isn't space in the system but because the city can't afford to hire staff that can afford to live in Munich.

reedlaw 12y ago

I live in Hangzhou and they are already addressing these problems. For example, there is a network of public bike stations. To use a bike, you make a 200 yuan deposit on a public transportation card. The first hour bike rental is free. After that it starts at 1 yuan for the second hour and goes up from there. The card also works for buses (a ride costs 2-4 yuan) using your available balance. After riding a bus, the free bike period is increased to 90 minutes. It's usually easy to find a bike and they are continuing to build new stations making it even more convenient. Cars are a problem because of the amount of traffic around the city center. To address that, the goverment mandated that private cars could only drive in the city once a week during weekday rush hour. New drivers can only get a license if they pay a hefty tax or win a lottery (only about 2% who enter win). These restrictions don't apply to electric vehicles. There is also a network of public electric cars that can be rented for personal use. They are about the size of Smart cars. The article points at the suburban sprawl starting to spread around cities like Shanghai. But what it doesn't mention is that most of these homes are super expensive or so far away as to require a lifestyle which most Chinese couldn't afford. Those who could afford these houses are likely to also be able to afford an even better lifestyle overseas. The middle-class can scarcely afford to buy a small apartment in China's top-tier cities. So I'm not too worried about Western-style sprawl taking over all of China.

gurkendoktor 12y ago
> I live in Hangzhou and they are already addressing these problems. For example, there is a network of public bike stations. Do people use these in your experience? I've noticed them pop up all over Germany and then Taiwan too, but I found it hard to spot anyone but tourists riding public bikes. I always wonder if these are simply prestige projects to impress green-minded citizens (like myself).
- skrebbel 12y ago
  In the Netherlands, most train stations have a bike station like that, and it seems to be quite a success. 4 years ago, seeing someone on such an "OV-fiets" (public transit bike) was an oddity, now it's very common. Doing the last mile by bike beats buses and trams big time, IMO. No waiting, no sitting next to sweaty people, no thinking, planning - just go. It probably helps that biking is already a strong element of Dutch culture, but if I'm not mistaken the Chinese bike a lot too so I guess it could work just as well.

nkoren 12y ago

A very simplistic and skewed article. As per its usual modus operandi, China is pursuing all options simultaneously. Which means that in addition to building hideous sprawling automotive-dependent suburbs, they're building the largest and most sophisticated urban and regional rail system in the world, and pursuing initiatives such as the Chengdu car-free city (http://weburbanist.com/2013/02/11/car-free-city-china-builds-dense-metropolis-from-scratch/ http://weburbanist.com/2013/02/11/car-free-city-china-builds...) which are vastly more progressive than anything the rest of the world has attempted. Portland is a great city by American standards, but its public transit mode-share for all trips in the metropolitan region still hovers around 4% -- with an additional ~2% coming from cycles -- making Portland ~94% dependent on private cars. (Note: you'll see statistics claiming a much higher mode share for Portland; this is done by excluding the other municipalities which account for >70% of the population in the metropolitan region, as well as by excluding the >60% of trips that are non-commuting trips). China is already doing much better than that, so it would be a shame if Portland were its target.

thorin 12y ago

The main problem I have here in the UK is that I live in a suburban area but have excellent train, bus, tram, road links into our nearest city and several other local cities. Every job I've expressed an interest in recently has an office outside of the main centre, normally near a major road junction. This makes the office inaccessible by public transport and much easier to get to by car. These are IT jobs in different industry sectors: retail, defence, finance, utilities etc. I suppose this is due to the price of land and availability of office space out of town. There is no incentive for most of these companies to be in a city centre. This is the major reason I'm likely to continue to drive to work. At the right time of day it takes 20 mins to drive, proabably over 1.5 hours by public transport - a mixture of train, bus, walk and much more expensive. How dissappointing! Of course this isn't an issue in London, I'm talking about provincial towns and cities.

coldcode 12y ago

To quote poet Carl Sandberg - "The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on." The problem is that screwing up the environment can happen so slowly that by the time you start to realize how bad it is to may be too late.

jpatokal 12y ago

There's one aspect where China has well and truly learned from America's mistakes: public transport. Every Chinese city of any importance has a metro system that's shiny new and heavily used. In 1993, the Shanghai Metro did not exist; today it's the world's longest, and by some measures the busiest. http://www.urbanrail.net/as/asia.htm http://www.urbanrail.net/as/asia.htm http://www.urbanrail.net/as/cn/shan/shanghai.htm http://www.urbanrail.net/as/cn/shan/shanghai.htm

seanmcdirmid 12y ago
But if you live in the suburbs and are just a car-less diaosi, you have your parents get up at 4am just to reserve a place for you in the bus line so you can make it to work by 8am (this is actually true for many places in Beijing, and some places in SH).

chiph 12y ago

I think it's because of Hollywood. They see the American TV shows and movies, and (slasher films aside) they show a happy suburban existence. And don't show hour-long commutes, the high cost of car ownership, etc.