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

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

#11

Post by barry-cotter »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #7
peter_l_downs wrote: post #2

> The new urbanisation guidelines encourage mixed-use development and recommend that all residents should have improved access to a diverse range of public and commercial amenities – schools, supermarkets, retirement centers, hospitals, parks, and cultural centers – within range of where they live. There is a special emphasis on green space: the guidelines decree that all city dwellers should have access to public pa…

They have already tried to do that for years. Many housing developments consist of tower blocks surrounded by a garden, with the ground floors used for convenience stores, hair dressers, etc.

That’s not what the article is talking about. Not tower blocks, think more like Xuhui or Changning in Shanghai where you have tons of eight story or ten story apartment blocks with the first or first two floors of street facing buildings being small retail, and instead of super blocks that take twenty minutes to walk around, like in Pudong, ones more like in Paris or New York, much smaller.

A perfect dense city looks like Brooklyn, Harlem or Paris, not like Pudong.

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

#12

Post by mytailorisrich »

barry-cotter wrote: post #11
mytailorisrich wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have already tried to do that for years. Many housing developments consist of tower blocks surrounded by a garden, with the ground floors used for convenience stores, hair dressers, etc.

That’s not what the article is talking about. Not tower blocks, think more like Xuhui or Changning in Shanghai where you have tons of eight story or ten story apartment blocks with the first or first two floors of street facing buildings being small retail, and instead of super blocks that take twenty minutes to walk around, like in Pudong, ones more like in Paris or New York, much smaller. A perfect dense city looks…

> A perfect dense city looks like Brooklyn, Harlem or Paris, not like Pudong.

That's your opinion. These places are short of green spaces.

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

#13

Post by baybal2 »

barry-cotter wrote: post #10
baybal2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trick with density is all about making those skyscrapers occupied. The giant vacant housing inventories have not gone down much over the years. Cheap housing sells well, but giant mansion apartments that got trendy at around 2012-2015 are really unsellable, and there were really a lot of them built in urban centres. Believe me or not, Shanghai has few places with 10 years old "brand new" apartments.

Whatever about other parts of China I do not believe there are 10 year old developments in Shanghai with brand new apartments unless you mean people who are holding unfinished concrete shells as investments and there are some of those in central, lived in developments. Getting any place within ten minutes taxi ride of a metro occupied is easy. Might be hard to sell it but you can rent it easy.

It is exactly what it is. 400m2+ apartments overloaded with styrofoam barocco decorations, appliances, furniture, ready for people to move in, just sitting there and rotting. I saw photos myself: plastic parts yellowing, styrofoam curlies cracking, organic materials getting mouldy here and there, and centimetre thick layer of dust on everything.

When they were put on the market 10 years ago, they were sold at such unimaginable, even for China, markups that even multimillionaires would've not gone for them. It was clear that the only buyers for them would've been some nouveau riche suckers.

They will not find buyers these days anymore. The example above is still on the side of the extreme, but say 3-4 year old developments being 50% vacant is a norm for 200m2+ apartments.

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

#14

Post by yorwba »

baybal2 wrote: post #5
xvilka wrote: post #3

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

The trick with density is all about making those skyscrapers occupied. The giant vacant housing inventories have not gone down much over the years. Cheap housing sells well, but giant mansion apartments that got trendy at around 2012-2015 are really unsellable, and there were really a lot of them built in urban centres. Believe me or not, Shanghai has few places with 10 years old "brand new" apartments.

Few people people can afford giant mansion apartments, but that doesn't mean they all stay vacant. With a lot of improvised plumbing and wiring plus drywall each of the original giant rooms can be turned into a much tinier apartment that can be rented out individually. I have lived in such a converted apartment and while it was pretty obvious that the original floorplan wasn't made for so many small units, I got used to it pretty quickly.

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

#15

Post by baybal2 »

yorwba wrote: post #14
baybal2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trick with density is all about making those skyscrapers occupied. The giant vacant housing inventories have not gone down much over the years. Cheap housing sells well, but giant mansion apartments that got trendy at around 2012-2015 are really unsellable, and there were really a lot of them built in urban centres. Believe me or not, Shanghai has few places with 10 years old "brand new" apartments.

Few people people can afford giant mansion apartments, but that doesn't mean they all stay vacant. With a lot of improvised plumbing and wiring plus drywall each of the original giant rooms can be turned into a much tinier apartment that can be rented out individually. I have lived in such a converted apartment and while it was pretty obvious that the original floorplan wasn't made for so many small units, I got used…

Yes, this is what is happening. People who run airbnbs or ziroom apartments like them.

Rents in China are still super cheap in comparison to the property and land price.

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

#16

Post by throw0101a »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #12
barry-cotter wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not what the article is talking about. Not tower blocks, think more like Xuhui or Changning in Shanghai where you have tons of eight story or ten story apartment blocks with the first or first two floors of street facing buildings being small retail, and instead of super blocks that take twenty minutes to walk around, like in Pudong, ones more like in Paris or New York, much smaller. A perfect dense city looks…

> A perfect dense city looks like Brooklyn, Harlem or Paris, not like Pudong. That's your opinion. These places are short of green spaces.

Then build more parks. But the "towers in the park" form of land use has been found not to work:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_in_the_park

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

#17

Post by barry-cotter »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #12
barry-cotter wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not what the article is talking about. Not tower blocks, think more like Xuhui or Changning in Shanghai where you have tons of eight story or ten story apartment blocks with the first or first two floors of street facing buildings being small retail, and instead of super blocks that take twenty minutes to walk around, like in Pudong, ones more like in Paris or New York, much smaller. A perfect dense city looks…

> A perfect dense city looks like Brooklyn, Harlem or Paris, not like Pudong. That's your opinion. These places are short of green spaces.

Nothing remotely like Pudong or Puxi in Shanghai. I’m very fortunate to live within walking distance of two small parks in Changning and that is way better than most of Puxi. If you want to see a good example of urban planning look at Singapore. Everything appears to be a park, road, tree or building and there’s plenty of the first two.

Whatever a perfect city looks like it does not look like Pudong or any of the rest of the last two decades of development in China with their super blocks, malls, residential gated communities with no retail and everything set up for cars.

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

#18

Post by throw0101a »

xvilka wrote: post #3

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

It's possible to get reasonable density with mid-rise (5-10 story) buildings.

* https://smartdensity.com/mid-rise-buildings-that-work-the-pr...

* https://www.planetizen.com/node/67761

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

#19

Post by throw0101a »

barry-cotter wrote: post #9
xvilka wrote: post #3

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

Chinese residential city blocks aren’t any denser than American ones, they do have more green space though. Paris is one of the densest cities in the world and it doesn’t really get taller than eight stories high.

> Paris is one of the densest cities in the world and it doesn’t really get taller than eight stories high.

For the record, it is 24th in the world:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_population_d...

And there are other French cities above it: Levallois-Perret is 8th at 26,432/km^2.

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

#20

Post by throw0101a »

barry-cotter wrote: post #8
mytailorisrich wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they are more efficient and free up space so you could have green spaces around them. See a bit what Le Corbusier was doing with its "Unité d'habitation": A large building that also included amenities and a park around it. Edit in response to Barry below: Whatever Le Corbusier's faults, "Unité d'habitation" [1] was indeed designed to be pleasant and liveable, and including a school (originally) and a floor for…

Examples of this working in practice would be appreciated. Le Corbusier’s name is mud among urban designers because he focused on how things would look in scale model or from an airplane, not on whether it made for a pleasant or livable environment. Architects love him obviously, but like Frank Lloyd Wright his individual residential buildings are surprisingly affordable because they’re great to look at rather than t…

> Examples of this working in practice would be appreciated.

There probably aren't:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_in_the_park

Toronto is demolishing its community housing that was built this way and rebuilding in more modern ways. The residents hated it.

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