Little in this article meshes with my experience living in large Chinese cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. Specifically, I have not observed the social problems mentioned "crime, ... social segregation, and destroyed community and neighborhood life". I believe a good description of the average large, Chinese city experience is: lots of cars and people but mixed development with plenty of shops, schools, markets, eating locations, parks, and public transport in easy walking distance. To me, the article comes across as an opinion piece - it was all bigger than the author would have preferred.
Almost all of the projects built in the last 10-15 years years are self contained walled apartment communities with multiple building surrounding a courtyard/common area.
In Beijing, you just have to get out of the third ring road before these are very common. The first placed I lived in was not like that, it was an older building in a fairly urban area, but after that it was a bunch of complexes (nicer apartments, it was difficult to find something nice outside of a complex), still only a few blocks away from restaurants (or a mall), but all with guarded gates.
It really shows when you want to go somewhere. You can just go from point A to point B, you can’t cut across the huge apartment complex in the middle, you have to instead go around it...that can get really annoying. Likewise, there are only a few roads that let you get between places (eg trying to go from northeast Beijing to sanlitun area, there is only one way across the airport expressway before it ends).
There are more non-walk friendly cities like Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok. KL - everything is walled private property and one can't use shortcuts throughout buildings like I am used in Europe. In Bangkok it's those "sois" which stems from main roads which are not interwoven. To go 100m from soi 48 to soi 49 I have to go back to main road which can be total walking distance of 1-1.5km.
PS: I love those cities for everything else.
It’s not just the complexes, every kind of campus in China is gated, like university campuses. It was a bit of a culture shock for me as a western American, but I’ve also seen this happen in east (Harvard) and some old campuses in Europe.
Tourism has taken its toll in European university towns, it would be too disruptive to leave them open. It’s a shame as I would love to attend lectures in Oxford but it’s completely cut off from the public.
These sound like a lot of London's new build complexes. I imaging China's are bigger, but as you say, "self contained walled apartment communities with multiple building surrounding a courtyard/common area".
The closest London has to this is the Barbican from the 60’s, which is still mostly open to the public, or Georgian squares with gardens in the centre closed to the public, which still have road access between the houses and gardens. Large new developments like Nine Elms, Greenwich Peninsula and Elephant and Castle as far as I know always have public thoroughfares. I can’t think of any recent development that could be described as a superblock or a gated community.
London does have a lot more open space which is in fact privately owned, which limits your rights in that space, but that is a separate issue.
From my very short experience in China (just under 2 months) the cities feel super safe (excluding terrible driving). But this is just an anecdote, naturally.
My Chinese friends generally also feel safer in China than in the Western EU. What I noticed in Chengdu and Shenzhen, literally everyone walks with their nose glued to a smartphone (very frequently iPhone). Apparently robberies are not a common thing.
OTOH I've heard pick-pocketing is quite common in Beijing and Shanghai.
A friend of mine from Allwinner had his apartment burglared (despite living in a walled community,) a coworker had his money stolen out of his bag in a cafe.
Shenzhen was not always that safe. Back 10 years ago, the city had unenviable reputation, but it went from one of most unsafe to one of safest.
That was done at the cost of having a police post every 100 meters (quite literally,) and it is not cheap.
I live in Prague and never ever have felt unsafe. One or two times I actually got into a light-ish fistfight, one time after a car crash and the second one was road rage, however I still deem Prague as an exceptionally safe city.
I agree actually, I live in Shanghai. I'm not sure if it's because I don't really u derstand urban planning but I don't really see what the fuss is over, you can still get around the city by bicycle if you want (and which I often do) and public transport is very convenient
I think it depends where in Shanghai you lived. If you lived in Huangpu, Changing, Xuhui or Jingan districts, bicycle is fine. These are Shanghai's richy-rich areas, once part of the foreign colonial concessions from 19th to mid-20th century. Filled with heritage architecture similar to the Beijing hutongs described in the article above. But once you branch-out to other districts, e.g. Jiading--the industrial district just a few subway stops to the north, it's a different arrangement.
> But once you branch-out to other districts, e.g. Jiading--the industrial district just a few subway stops to the north, it's a different arrangement.
Bicycle is fine is many not that great areas, e.g. Zhabei, Yangpu and most part of Minhang districts. Most areas within the outer ring road are fine for bicycles. Jiading is an extreme example - there are rice paddy fields just 200 meters north of the Jiading North metro station [1].
"you can still get around the city by bicycle if you want"
Except:
- bicycles can't cross the river via the tunnels, so you have to wait for a ferry to get to/from puxi/pudong (I remember this adding almost one hour to my journey one night, as the first couple of ferry terminals I visited had closed for the day, and the third had a long wait until the next ferry).
- some of the streets around the major shopping areas prohibit cyclists, even though they are open to cars and pedestrians
I read an article years ago about how urban design in China post-Tiananmen has deliberately incorporated features that prevent mass protests. Narrow, labyrinthine alleys are hard to clear out and control. With sprawling, eight-lane highways, it's relatively easy.
If you can find a link to the article about post-1989 urban deisgn in China, that would be great. I doubt any contemporary urban area anywhere in the world are built (or re-built) in the form of "narrow, labyrinthine alleys unless it's about preserving historical structures. The major roads of Beijing within the 2nd Ring Road were built mostly in the 1950s and 1960s, mostly inspired by Soviet urban planning. Perhaps you were talking about Haussmann's renovation of Paris?
And no, many Southern Chinese cities still have complex layouts in their historical districts (e.g. Suzhou, Nanjing, Yangzhou). Just check them out on Google Maps. No one in their right minds will build anything without following a grid pattern at least loosely in the post-WWII era. Having reasonably wide roads to accommodate traffic is just basic urban planning. Many rapidly growing Chinese cities suffer from chronic traffic congestion because even the roads built in the 90s don't have enough capacity to handle so many cars. Maybe the "eight-lane highways" were needed because of that?
The highways were not needed because there are a lot of cars. They are needed because the city is structured poorly and with a lot of segregation between functions so that anyone who wants to do something that is different from the function of the current block (e.g. they want to work but they are now at home, or they want to get a haircut but they're at work) requires a trip by car.
Lots of cars around in 1871. I think grids are useful layouts for cities that don't have any motorists. Most of these gridded cities were designed before cars. Modern suburbia loves the cul-de-sac.
I was thinking of natural structures like the branches of trees and the tributaries of rivers. Because cities rebuilt like that in the 20th c does not mean that it was a good idea or successful.
A gridded street system is also quite useful for inhabitants/businesses that want to go to an address without a map (or even with one). You can easliy go to a place you have never been to before. This is probably a highly undervalued property of grid layouts for cities before the invention of telephones, GPS, etc.
I kind of doubt that’s specifically a feature of post Tiananmen urban design. Baron Haussmann’s redesign of Paris during the second empire did the same thing, making central Paris a city of wide boulevards that are impossible to blockade. There’s debate over the extent to which this was a deliberate attempt to make suppression of urban revolt easier but there were six such revolts between 1830 and 1848 and only one afterward, the Paris Commune, which was comprehensively crushed.
Urban planners just like big wide straight roads and with automobiles they can really indulge themselves. They look neat and tidy on a plan and impressive in real life. Building for officials and planners, not for living. That said the party-state is very much alive to the possibility of revolt and I’m sure some people thought about the military implications of urban planning but I’d say the primary motivation was ease of planning and building more than crowd control concerns. A competent military force would be quite capable of crushing an urban revolt even if both sides were armed with nothing but rifles. Professionals beat amateurs at everything and when the professionals have not just drill, discipline and training on their side but overwhelming fire power, air support and better communications the difference in capabilities becomes comical.
The article doesn't really provide any arguments against superblock planning. Is she assuming that the failure of America's city planning is readily apparant? Why? And how would these failures not be explained by poor zoning laws in the US?
Why wouldn't I want to be able to live in a safe and efficient semi-arcology if I could afford it?
> Is she assuming that the failure of America's city planning is readily apparant? Why?
The only walkable cities in the US were developed before the rise of the automobile, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Chicago, etc. Any city with areas that requires you to own a car to participate in civic life is a failure of urban planning. That describes more or less all urban development in the US since WWII.
> And how would these failures not be explained by poor zoning laws in the US?
Poor zoning and land lease dominated urban development are both failures of urban planning, though the mechanisms are different. Walkable, mixed use urban development is the ideal, whether you’re talking about dense neighbourhoods of apartment blocks with ground level retail like central Paris or Amsterdam or decent suburban growth with detached or semi-detached single family homes where people can walk to an area with shops, pubs and restaurants, a town centre.
Car centric urban design makes living without a car a miserable experience, is a cancer on the growth of local communities and infantilises the young by making them dependent on their parents to go anywhere to do anything.
Beijing is a large city with 16,810 km² area. Building superblocks is a reasonable choice in Beijing.
Local government and residents also benefit hugely from the land leases revenue.
Transportation is not bad in Beijing, considering that public transit and bike-sharing are even more ubiquitous nowadays.
This does not jibe with my experience in Beijing. I’ve lived in Shanghai for seven years and visited Beijing for maybe two weeks but I’ve spent more time in traffic jams in Beijing.
Land leases are a red herring when it comes to superblocks too. There’s no reason why local governments couldn’t make money with smaller, more walkable blocks like you see in Manhattan or in central Paris. You need internal roads within parcels of superblocks to roughly the same extent you need them between smaller blocks. The government could have leased out the same area to the same developers and have had them build smaller blocks.
My personal bugbear when it comes to Chinese urban planning is the dearth of green space. Pudong was the countryside 30 years ago and now it’s built up. If you compare it to Singapore the latter comes off incomparably better. The four or eight lane highways in between blocks in Pudong are just awful, car centric, an avoidable mistake.
> Beijing is a large city with 16,810 km² area. Building superblocks is a reasonable choice in Beijing
This is the cart before the horse. Beijing didn't start out as a large city. It is municipal annexation that makes Beijing a large city, which is fairly common in China, e.g. Beijing and Xiong'an, Guangzhou and Panyu, Nansha.
Land leasing is mostly just an indirect form of tax which distorts government incentives and the economy
- Governments are incentivized to promote development above all else, which means that unsavory tactics like unfair compensation of rural farmers is rampant.
- At the same time, governments are incentivized to prop up property prices. The housing price to income ratio is a multiple of those even in Western cities, making it unaffordable for most citizens. And the central government cannot deflate a plainly obvious property bubble threatening the economy, because then developers won't make land-lease payments and the local governments will default en masse.
Is the Chinese "superblock" the same thing as a Soviet "microdistrict?
If so, the article is off the mark, the whole idea of the concept is a less car-centric life. You're supposed to commute to work by public transport and walk inside your "superblock" during leisure time.
And it failed spectacularly in mid-90s-early-2000s.
Every flat surface is parked over with cars, often for weeks, decomposing on kids playgrounds. All activities happen in the center of the city or in big malls anyway.
"It’s hard not to believe that gated superblock developments, which nauseatingly often include daycare centers, cram schools and other amenities for residents’ children within the superblock gates."
I feel like I'm missing something here. Why is it even objectionable, let alone "nauseating", for these amenities to be available within the superblocks?
I am glad I am not the only one who feel this way. Hacker News is a well-oiled pro-West propaganda machinery lately. Not sure if it is nationalism forcing people to be hostile towards China, Russia, India and anything not from the West.
I introduced a lot of people to HN, but they get turned off by these pro-West propaganda and leave. Such a turn off. I try to avoid news about China, Russia, India and anything from my beloved continent of Africa because I know comments will be mostly negative.
I am not a fan of echo chambers. I am forced to tolerate this echo chamber because of tech-related news. How I wish HN that can focus 100% on tech and related news. That was going to be awesome for people like me who don't like to be force-fed propaganda. Tech news is the only thing keeping me from quitting it altogether, but amount of propaganda being pushed to the front page will really push me to the edge.
I'm oversensitive to this and my comment is sort of off-topic, but I've seen a fair bit of confusion, especially on China, where people fail to distinguish between the authoritarian government, nationals, and people of ethnic descent. This confusion has led to some awful comments, like "I obfuscate my code before sharing with my Chinese colleagues because they are here to steal." What does that even mean? Chinese by name? By accent? By passport and secret party membership? I'd almost prefer to see tropes, e.g. "Russian hacking" or "Chinese social credit score" than thinly-veiled attacks or blatant over-generalizations on entire populations.
Ha! I would say it's mostly just pro-europe considering the amount of outrage porn there is against the big US tech companies, US government/culture on things like social safety nets, the US military and what not which is ironic considering this website is hosted by a US venture capital firm.
In a country with a fairly low GDP/capita, the form of development must have been heavily influenced by economics. The capital cost per dwelling unit and the cost of delivering utilities (electricity, communications, water, sewerage, etc) and transportation must be taken into account.
Why does everybody insist on living in a huge single city? Why not just build more smaller cities interconnected with highways and public trains (for those of you who haven't been to Europe - trains can be very fast, capacious and comfortable)?
Transportation and other infrastructure is cheaper to build on a per capita basis. It's easier to find work and workers, especially more specialized workers.
With higher density, certain services become profitable. Food delivery, more frequent and lower latency package delivery. 24 hour stores. Wider variety of restaurants. Art museums, live action theatres, sports arenas all tend to be in or near cities.
A larger city also has less political squabbling because, at the end of the day, the mayor is (typically) elected at large. Look at DC and Arlington for nearby cities with arbitrary borders and the political struggles that can create. Not that big cities are immune to this sort of thing, of course, just not resistant.
This is why cities tend to annex neighbors. NYC took on Queens and Brooklyn, which already had towns and a city. Regional planning was possible then.
There are disadvantages though. Price, less green space, less space in general, likely higher pollution than the countryside.
I have doubt it being anything modern. Chinese city planning of rectangular grids of increasing order is very old. Some of oldest historical cities are built exactly like that
Doesn't this happen with all major cities after an increase of wealth, living standard and industrialization? People sit in their living rooms with all of their (unnecesarilly) bought stuff watching Netflix instead of investing time, money and effort in neighbourhood commerce, families and local communities. We become much more individualistic when we see money can get us all our immediate needs.
No, they don’t. They have underground garages for cars of course, but inside is just tall apartment buildings and a huge courtyard. For example this is the place I used to live:
It is a huge complex that absolutely has no vehicle traffic. It is very unlike the older places next to it (as you can see on the map, they actually have roads).
One of the benefits of car-free superblocks is that outdoor spaces within the block become much safer for pedestrians.
Where in a modern city would you find an area 400 meters across with zero motor vehicle traffic? Maybe in a large park. Car-free superblocks bring that park right to your doorstep. It's even better than a real park in the sense that when you actually need a car, it's only an elevator ride away. It's an absolutely fantastic proposition for parents of young children or people with impaired mobility, especially in a country where drivers aren't known for being gentle.
Superblock development has many other pros and cons, but I think the car-free aspect is a very strong argument in favor of it.
Oh ya, I’m not really complaining about that part. Just that the traffic flow is exactly broken up into huge arterials around huge blocks as the article reported (which is accurate). I do prefer more urban apartment living if I don’t have kids, meaning smaller apartment complexes that are more integrated into a diverse urban environment around them (Beijing is a bad example for that, but say an older stand alone apartment building in Shanghai Puxi).
Some super blocks have internal roads, some don’t. Shengshinianhua in Pudong has 35 buildings and an internal road[1]. Zhongyuan Liangwancheng is so big that it just wouldn’t work without internal roads. It has over two hundred apartment blocks[2].
Superblocks suck. So what is the solution? I would appreciate the article much more if in addition to criticism to this model they proposed a better alternative to the problem of housing tens of millions of people quickly.
