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.
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.
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.
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.
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
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
> 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.
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
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.
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.
> 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)?
> The largest city in the world is as big as Austria, but few people have ever heard of it
Pet peeve but this article is confusing Chongqing's entire land area with the city of Chongqing and associated urban areas (only 6% of Chongqing's total land area).
The issue is 直辖市 is translated as "direct-administered city" but should be treated as a "Direct-administered municipality" or "Direct-administered state".
Much of Chongqing (the 直辖市 not the city) was formed due to a reorganization of Sichuan in 1997.
Isn't the same regularly done? If you're talking e.g. about NYC, Tokyo, London or other large cities, there is usually the distinction between "Greater <city name>" or "metropolitan area" and the actual city boundaries.
I visited Chongqing when I lived in Shanghai around 2002. People regarded it as an insignificant city back then - everyone was so fixated on Shanghai and Beijing. Anyway, Chongqing was under major construction, as was most of the country. But I remember the locals used to say that when you walked to work in the morning you needed to leave a trail of rice because the city changes so rapidly that you'll never find your way home by the time your shift is done. LOL
Haven't been to Chongqing in a while, but the vertical nature of the city is fascinating [1]. It's like they layered multiple cities on top of each other! Curious how that affects social interactions in daily life.
I have to say I didn't really have an interest in visiting China until I saw pictures of Chongqing. I spent a whole night one day watching walking videos in that city and vertical nature of it is just incredible.
The city is also famous for its hot and humid climate. Locals have to eat lots of spicy foods to make their life a little bit easier. You won't last more than a week there.
That bookstore is beautiful but how does one access books on that twenty foot tall shelf - it seems a bit impractical for even looking at the spine of a book.
I had to look it up and could not find any English sources for this location but the book store chain is named after Sisyphus (my first thought was the struggle against online retailers) and has multiple stores in Chongqing, this one looks more practical and like a stylish library and store for books: https://www.dezeen.com/2019/08/04/chongqing-zhongshuge-books...
If you take the list of largest cities in China and google them from largest down, you'll find an incredible number of cities that just look like they're in the future.
If you call Chongqing the largest city in the world (it is not), you need to call Canton (the Greater Bay Area, GBA) bigger. With 86m and the cities of Guangzhou, Shenzen, Foshan,... even without Hong Kong and Macao, it's the largest mega city by far.
As a city in western terms, Chongqing only has around 8 million people, and is not even in the top twenty of Chinese cities. If you include the entire municipality that is the size of Vermont, it’s largely rural with other cities inside it (so 31 million people total, 22 million urban, 8 million for Chongqing proper). Compare with Beijing which has around 10 million in its proper area (inside 5th ring) and 20 million people total.
I see countless US stories about how "family farmers defend themselves from evil development" or "Oakland residents suffer the effects of global trade booming in their city". But when I read about China's incredible growth nothing like that is ever mentioned. Why is that?
For candid Chinese dissidence there are a couple of tolerated zones on wechat, like an American Embassy’s wechat page. Its not protected, people just use it that way sometimes. And you just have to learn some of the slang.
There are in person clashes sometimes. The municipal level isn’t as quick to seem every little action as an affront to the territorial unity of China, which is against the Chinese constitution.
The social safety nets are very expansive and work decent for the population. Housing, healthcare, busy work for income.
Chinese citizens actually can stand up to private developers. Not so much stuff like the Three Gorges Dam. The developers just build right around them. It pops up as a single photo with one of these homes on reddit sometimes but CNN ran a story a decade ago, there's even a name for the way the home sticks out.
https://www.cnn.com/2015/05/19/asia/gallery/china-nail-house...
The CCP has a pretty tight grip on the domestic narrative. The farmers in China have no agency to complain. US farmers, on the other hand, are a powerful constituency, especially the consolidated, corporate entities.
because it's not evil development. what i have seen that actually happens is that the farmers get enough money to build a new house. it is based on the size of the house they had in the village which lead to the curious situation that people expanded their buildings even though they knew already that their village was slated to be wiped.
then the farmers pool their money and build multistory apartment buildings not far from the area where their village was so they are not being chased away and left helpless.
Most EU passports get 30 days visa free entry, everything is quite inexpensive, the super apps both have a translation feature now, which helps a lot since most restaurants take orders through them.
It is super safe, no theft, almost no scams.
Hotels and train trips on trip.com.
The main challenges are to find a non smoking hotel room and to not gain too much weight.
About the same as the rest of China, meaning not very accessible, but not impossible either. There's a major airport, you need WeChat/Alipay for everything (but you can now easily set up foreign credit cards for these), approximately nobody speaks English but translation apps work and tour guides are cheap, the Great Firewall is a hassle but roaming SIMs can bypass it.
The sheer spice level of the food is a challenge though, even other Chinese think that Chongqing level spiciness is nuts.
[+] [-] kubb|10 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] hshdhdhj4444|10 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] yusaydat|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] moomin|10 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] em-bee|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] yapyap|10 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] idiotsecant|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] apexalpha|10 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] whatever1|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] pydry|10 months ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] graemep|10 months ago|reply
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!
[+] [-] thelastgallon|10 months ago|reply
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
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.
[+] [-] thenthenthen|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] zkmon|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] LetMeLogin|10 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] deIeted|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] aprilthird2021|10 months ago|reply
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)?
[+] [-] alephnerd|10 months ago|reply
Pet peeve but this article is confusing Chongqing's entire land area with the city of Chongqing and associated urban areas (only 6% of Chongqing's total land area).
The issue is 直辖市 is translated as "direct-administered city" but should be treated as a "Direct-administered municipality" or "Direct-administered state".
Much of Chongqing (the 直辖市 not the city) was formed due to a reorganization of Sichuan in 1997.
[+] [-] luotuoshangdui|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] xg15|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] jimt1234|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] kappasan|10 months ago|reply
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/CityPorn/comments/8kqwnf/chongqing_...
[+] [-] rwmj|10 months ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities#List https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacity#List_of_megacities
which disagree with this (and each other) on which city is largest.
[+] [-] _fat_santa|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] sagacity|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rasso|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] feverzsj|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] stevenwoo|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] stevenwoo|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] echelon|10 months ago|reply
It's an incredible city.
[+] [-] forinti|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] phantomathkg|10 months ago|reply
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[+] [-] rurban|10 months ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangdong%E2%80%93Hong_Kong%E2...
[+] [-] seanmcdirmid|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rcpt|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] yieldcrv|10 months ago|reply
For candid Chinese dissidence there are a couple of tolerated zones on wechat, like an American Embassy’s wechat page. Its not protected, people just use it that way sometimes. And you just have to learn some of the slang.
There are in person clashes sometimes. The municipal level isn’t as quick to seem every little action as an affront to the territorial unity of China, which is against the Chinese constitution.
The social safety nets are very expansive and work decent for the population. Housing, healthcare, busy work for income.
[+] [-] stevenwoo|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] arrosenberg|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] em-bee|10 months ago|reply
then the farmers pool their money and build multistory apartment buildings not far from the area where their village was so they are not being chased away and left helpless.
[+] [-] barbazoo|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Havoc|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Snoozus|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] decimalenough|10 months ago|reply
The sheer spice level of the food is a challenge though, even other Chinese think that Chongqing level spiciness is nuts.
[+] [-] lossolo|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] freetime2|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rado|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] waltercool|10 months ago|reply
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[+] [-] ShonT|10 months ago|reply
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[+] [-] oldpersonintx|10 months ago|reply
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