Shanghai: 1990 vs 2010

[mean]

I'll just leave this here: http://io9.com/5739216/a-portrait-of-hy ... nghai-2010

[ignatius]

Amazing for just 20 years...

[mean]

China is going to kick our butts.

[bahua]

Car culture will slow them down, but yes.

[KCMax]

China is going to kick our butts.

At who can destroy the planet first!

[mlind]

Destroyed are all the old and interesting buildings that give a history of the city.

[mean]

Destroyed are all the old and interesting buildings that give a history of the city.

That may be, but at least they weren't torn down for parking lots.

[chrizow]

old buildings in china are constructed from compressed moths.

[voltopt]

some of the older buildings in the foreground are still visible in the current photo.

[UMKCroo]

I went to shanghai two summers ago for a couple weeks.  Awesome, cant wait to return!  Maybe its forced, but talk about everyone in a city being on the same page.  There is nothing that cant be done.  I am sure they lost alot of historic structures in their dramatic reconfiuration of their skyline, but they still have HUGE swaths of 19th century parisian architecture all over the city.  Including the riverwalk in the forefront.  Pollution and humanitatrianism continue to be an issue, but seeing the transformation firsthand I can honestly say I was blown away by the modernism and cleanliness.  Inland cities are a different story of course.

[bbqboy]

what is that building that looks like a claes oldenburg bottle opener?

[KC Kropf]

what is that building that looks like a claes oldenburg bottle opener?

Shanghai World Financial Center

[aknowledgeableperson]

Didn't want to start a new topic so here are some thoughts on China overall:

"I was recently in Shanghai and I took their high-speed train to Hangzhou,"  (referring to the new Maglev line that has cut traveling time between the two cities to less than an hour from four hours previously)

"The brand new high-speed train is half-empty and the brand new station is three-quarters empty. Parallel to that train line, there is also a new highway that looked three-quarters empty. Next to the train station is also the new local airport of Shanghai and you can fly to Hangzhou."

"There is no rationale for a country at that level of economic development to have not just duplication but triplication of those infrastructure projects."

This observation dovetails exactly with the story I brought you some months back about China's ghost cities, and the "manufactured" nature of their GDP "growth".  China is not the economic juggernaut that some would have you believe.  In fact, China is in DEEP trouble, trouble they cannot escape, and that will begin to manifest itself in the coming months and years; as the veil is pulled back to reveal the man behind the curtain.  The truth, when finally discovered, will not be pretty.

Demographic truths cannot be altered by massive government spending...for long.  That is exactly what China is doing, and it will eventually be their undoing.  They have 2 demographic problems that will take literally generations to fix, if they can be fixed at all. 

Problem number one: their one child policy.  Today there are 125 boys for every 100 girls in China.  If you know teenage and 20 something males, you know how their hormones are raging.  They will not stick around if they have no chance of finding a mate, and if they DO stay, they are going to cause problems.  Its human nature. 

Problem number two:  their aging population.  The aging of China's population is going to cause the same problems faced in Japan since 1990.  It's not a matter of if, but when, the same economic decline that occurred in Japan begin to occur in China.

[IraGlacialis]

That may be, but at least they weren't torn down for parking lots.

Arguable logic as there is little luxury to have lots and such in the urban core, as well as a substantial population and amount of business to sustain such buildings.
If you look towards the wealthier suburbs of Asian cities, you will see that sea-of-parking life-style centers are starting to pop up in response to the growing car culture.
This is on top of the high potential of such development overextending itself (ala Dubai or pre-1997 Bangkok). Then what you will have is a whole bunch of empty husks of skyscrapers, which isn't much better.
That being said...

Destroyed are all the old and interesting buildings that give a history of the city.

It is not as bad as what is occurring in Beijing. As mentioned by UMKCRoo, Shanghai is leaps and bounds ahead of it's interior brethren, which are pretty much smog-laden swaths of cookie-cutter towers.
And for post-modern architecture, Shanghai and Hong Kong have some of my favorite examples. The Jin Mao tower is probably my favorite in Shanghai.

Problem number two:  their aging population.  The aging of China's population is going to cause the same problems faced in Japan since 1990.  It's not a matter of if, but when, the same economic decline that occurred in Japan begin to occur in China.

That may be a problem in the medium-term, economy wise.
However, world health-wise in the long-term, it will be one of the best things to happen. Now if only the same happens with those Indian Subcontinent, Latin American, and sub-Sahara African nations... 

[bahua]

It appears to be significantly darker there now.