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Beijing’s poor air quality is a well-documented phenomenon, yet what is often not considered is the fact is that the municipality has taken steps in recent years to deindustrialize and move its polluting factories outside the city to neighboring provinces (mainly Hebei Province). Unfortunately the closure of factories doesn’t seem to have done much to abate Beijing’s air quality problems as an increasing number of private automobiles continue to clog the city’s roads. That being said, Beijing did try its best to at least keep its air clean for the two weeks of the Summer Olympics back in 2008.
One of the most high-profile examples of this effort was the permanent closure of the China National Steel Factory in western Beijing- one of the largest steel mills in the country. My friend and Beijing resident Daniel Garst, an American writer, recently had the opportunity to visit the decommissioned factory and take some nice shots of the slowly decaying complex.
As the future remains uncertain for the former steel factory, it presently serves as a reminder of Beijing’s industrial past and is a prime location for shooting photography and filming commercials. Perhaps the factory will be reused in the future as a commercial/entertainment district as developers take advantage of the ‘industrial chic’ aesthetic to redevelop other decommissioned factories around the country.
For now, please enjoy the following images of the abandoned complex. View full post »
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A piece I wrote about China’s proposed eco-cities appeared recently in the inaugural issue of Dwell Asia magazine. The article takes a look at two proposed eco-cities, Dongtan in Shanghai and the Sino-Singapore Eco-city in Tianjin, examining the implications of the ideas presented in both proposals.
For the readers of the China Urban Development Blog, here is a reproduction of the original piece:
Today’s urban development zeitgeist suggests that cities should move towards sustainable models of living to combat climate change and reduce resource consumption. Of course, how to achieve that is a subject of ongoing debate among design and planning professionals. Unfortunately, branding new developments as ‘green’, ‘eco’ or ‘sustainable’ is often a loaded attempt to satisfy marketing and public relations needs for developers and government officials.
Nowhere is the use of greenwashing strategies more common than in China, where new cities practically arise overnight. Many new developments, particularly large-scale residential communities consisting of repetitive tower blocks, with names like Authentic Gardens and Spring Flower Court, claim to be environmentally friendly, but have little in the way of sustainable design strategies aside from a few patches of green space. View full post »
 1 World Trade Center Rising in Lower Manhattan
Now that it has been about a month since the 10 year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in the U.S., I have had some time to reflect on the enduring significance of the skyscraper. With One World Trade Center finally starting to form a new image in the Manhattan skyline, we see that in spite of protestations to building such a tower on sacred ground, construction crews move ahead to realize what will perhaps be the city’s most ambitious project in years. Some question why it has taken so long to get to this point while others still see the entire rebuilding effort as an affront to the memory of tragedy. View full post »
 Fake ‘Apple Store’ in Kunming
It is not hard to understate the influence that Apple has had on China. If we examine the role the country plays in the supply-chain of Apple products, then China’s relationship with the company is undeniable. It is safe to say that without China’s contribution to the manufacturing and assembly process, Apple’s stylish products would be unaffordable to the average consumer around the globe.
That’s why last year when a string of suicides hit Foxconn, the company that manufactures products such as the iPad and iPhone, Steve Jobs was quick to announce that Apple would look into the working conditions. Jobs, a marketing genius, knew that negative PR associated with Foxconn would hurt Apple’s sleek and stylish image in the U.S.
What commentators in the U.S. failed to notice is the relative ambivalence of people in China regarding the Foxconn suicides. When I asked my Chinese colleagues what effect the incident had on their perception of Apple, they responded that there was absolutely none. Not only that, they defended Foxconn by saying that the rate of suicides among workers (there are tens of thousands of them) is not abnormal for society at large. View full post »
I had the privilege of sitting in on a round-table discussion led by the ‘Go West Project‘ at the Chengdu Biennale this past weekend. Go West Project is an independent think-thank based in Shanghai founded by two Dutch nationals, Michiel Hulshof, a journalist, and Daan Roggeveen, an architect. For the past two years, Hulshof and Roggeveen traveled around the country documenting the phenomenon of urbanization in China’s lesser-known cities (hence the name ‘Go West‘).
Their research culminated in a recently released book titled How the City Moved to Mr. Sun. The title refers to one of the several personal narratives they encountered in their travels. Mr. Sun, a corn farmer in a village on the outskirts of Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei Province, saw his land seized by authorities nearly 20 years ago. Like many of the other villagers, he used the compensation money to develop his own 4-storey ‘mixed-use’ building complete with retail space on the ground floor, living space on the 2nd and 3rd floors and a small group of guestrooms for migrant workers on the 4th floor. On the roof, Mr. Sun created an organic garden to continue doing what he knew how to do best.
Inevitably, the pace of urbanization caught up to Mr. Sun once again, and after about a 10 year run of profitability, his self-developed building was razed by bulldozers. He reluctantly gave in and accepted compensation and now lives with his wife in a modern high-rise residential tower block where ‘he doesn’t know any of the neighbors’. View full post »
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by Adam Mayer