cooker

Car-Free City: China Builds Dense Metropolis from Scratch | Urbanist
don't know if this has already been discussed.

Artkansas 

I just saw the article and came here to share it. You beat me.

Walter S

At first look this seems like a cool idea, but a niche solution given that there's so many cities and billions of people on the planet with an infrastructure that must be adapted rather than built from scratch. But a possible real benefit of places like this is that they begin to serve as shining examples of car-free done right. This might prime people's psychology to think about elements of these examples that can be applied to new construction or reconstruction projects around the world.

wphamilton

I wonder if they'll even allow bikes - the concept appears to be "vehicle-free".

But cynical as I am, it puts me in mind of China's "ghost cities", new development that remains mostly empty. China's Most Famous Ghost City Got Even Worse In The Last 4 Years

cooker

Too car dependent, I guess

Seriously - shows the flaw in too much central planning. I hope in undertaking this new plan they learn from those expensive mistakes.

tandempower

Yes, part of me agrees and thinks it's great someone (anyone) is doing something proactive with car-free planning and building. Another part of me cringes at the thought of car-free living being associated with China and communism in cultures where those two 'C' words are cause for automatic stigma. Rationally, though, it doesn't matter if it's designed and/or built by Chinese communism or global capitalism, it's ultimately just a city layout to be able to live without cars, right?

cooker

LOL China has been one of the world's greatest bicycling nations for decades, and car-free for the vast majority of the population for its entire history - it's not like they're suddenly discovering it.

Dahon.Steve

+1

I'm concerned about this city. China is constructing too many cities at once and they are empty. It's scary what they are doing with their wealth because eventually their market will suffer a correction and could throw the entire world into an economic recession.

I suspect the average apartment in this city is going to cost 150-230K (USD) which means it will be out of reach for most of the population leaving the city empty. I don't know what the government is thinking in the long term because the overwhelming majority of the people on the street make can in no way afford the mortgage. Today or tomorrow.

tandempower

There are two ways to look at it, one functional and the other political. In terms of functionality, it's great that Chinese biking was as popular as it was because that did a lot in terms of conserving global resources and fortifying the global economy, not to mention making life good and healthy for a significant number of people.

In terms of politics, however, it's always a little annoying when people see you ride a bike for transportation and make some subtly nationalistic comment like, "you would probably love living in China - everybody rides bikes over there." It's just the old, "what they do there is different from what we do here." The implications are collective-conformist, i.e. that what the group does, the individuals do by nature. It's simplistic normative thinking that's a pain to correct because correcting it requires raising a discussion and many people like to express assumptions like this without any discussion.

Anyway, the fact that Chinese driving is growing so much in popularity is actually good for political talk because people reflect more on the unsustainability of driving when they ponder the prospect of the entire Chinese population switching from cycling to driving. Also, because many people automatically want to differentiate themselves culturally from other ethnicities, like Chinese, it's nice to be able to note that China loves and aspires to drive as much as the US, as many US people will then seek to differentiate themselves from the Chinese, purely out of nationalistic pride/exceptionalism.

Ethnic politics are childish and immature but many adults have minds that never develop beyond this kind of thinking, sadly.

The fact that material abundance translates into recession is a glitch in modern economics. It should be possible to utilize surplus housing, even if that results in drastic reductions in property prices, rents, etc. while continuing to produce other necessities such as food and clothing. It just so happens that there are large numbers of people dependent on payments such as rent and mortgage payments to fund their revenues and incomes and these people don't want to adapt to an economy where the markets for those payments are destabilized.

Traditional free market logic says the property owners reduce prices until they find buyers/renters who will take it at that price. However, because many on the supply side don't want to accept price reductions, they attempt to use product-differentiation to solicit higher payments despite ample price-competition. This is why you hear so much about location and other forms of status. Sellers/landlords want to sell/rent their property as far as possible above the price of the competition.

One strategy for such product-differentiation is to ghettoize competing areas. This can be done by investing in industries in those areas that reduce quality of life and hence drive people to greater desperation in their search (and willingness to pay more for) higher quality of life. China and its economic beneficiaries have significant investing power. Could we see a global economy where they use their power to invest in lowering quality of life in US cities and elsewhere in an attempt to drive people to migrate to these largely empty cities?

fietsbob

On Paper and CGI it looks nice ... Reality is always different from architects plans.

cooker

How about commenting on the thread topic instead of your usual off-topic commenting about BF members?

cooker

This one sounds pretty modest and more feasible compared to Kangbashi, the ghost city linked by wphamilton (above) which can hold 300,000 people and currently has 20,000. That was built not far from an existing city of 500,000 (Dongshen), so it called for a huge jump in local urban population. In contrast, the car free city is supposed to house 80,000 and is planned to be near one of China's largest cities, Chengdu, pop 14,000,000, where presumably real estate can be pretty expensive, so one can speculate that there may be enough people willing to fill it if it is seen as desirable and affordable.

Roody

I'd like to see more details. I do like the fact that everything in the town appears to be within a short walking distance. I wonder what the transit connection to the nearby larger city is like. It's important to be able to get to a larger city from time to time.

Personally, I would not like living in a high-rise, but a lot of people seem to enjoy them. The six-story modular complex (second photo) looks more to my taste.

wahoonc

Why are they looking at ships?

Aaron

cooker

In fact, it has a lot in common, albeit on a grander scale, given China's massive population, with one of your own proposals: https://www.bikeforums.net/living-car...ee-suburb.html

Essentially it is a low-impact, small footprint, car-free suburb that is partially economically self-sustaining, but also well connected by rail to a existing larger centre.

I-Like-To-Bike

OK. The reality of the project addressed in the OP will not have the slightest effect on the reality of anybody reading BF (or anybody in the Western World) who either lives car free or wishes to live car free.

The far out proposals of some of the LCF posters have no contact with anyone's reality except in poster dreamland.

cooker

Thanks, I disagree. If the project gets built, and people like it, and move in, it could spawn a radical shift in how China handles future population growth and rural to urban migration. Like the Dutch in the 1950's, who experienced the pains of too-rapid automobilization, and fought back with woonerfs/safe streets and massive bike infrastructure, the Chinese too are realizing that a rapid conversion to a private car model has many downsides and are starting to look at alternatives. And just as North American cities have belatedly started to go Dutch, I wouldn't be surprised if in our lifetime, they also start to look at innovations coming out of China, which will be forced by it's rapid growth and development, and massive population in play, to innovate like no culture or nation before in urban design.

Ekdog

I think you're right. the Chinese are starting to rethink their moves towards American-style, car-centric cities. There's just no future in it.

Which American cities "have belatedly started to go Dutch"? Is any city in the States really anywhere near them in transport cycling or even contemplating such a heavy reliance on the bicycle?

Roody

North America should take China's pull-back form the automobile as a challenge. Are we going to let them beat us at providing safe nd comfortable living conditions in the next few decades? Or are we going to step up and take the leadership role in building (or rebuilding) clean and convenient cities?

cooker

There's a huge move towards building bike facilities in American cities (see eg.Pedaling Revolution | OSU Press), but it's decades behind Europe.

tandempower

That's true, in a sense, except the reason I posted that thread was to illustrate how small a car-free community could start, i.e. with only two (relatively small) buildings. This city is starting much bigger, which will be a deterrent to its replication, even if successful. Of course I hope it IS successful and I hope that others worldwide will follow suit in creating car-free areas of various shapes and sizes. I'm just afraid there will be all this uncritical negative press focussed on using ad hominem issues like anti-China and anti-communism sentiments as emotional ploys to garner opposition to car-free city-planning. Status-quo defenders don't often restrict themselves to reason-based argumentation.

tandempower

It really is a crucial point that China was following suit with America first and then decided to rethink it based on future potential. The problem is that many Americans don't think in terms of future potential or sustainability except insofar as they look at the 20th century as a period of big economic growth that they would like to see revived and maintained indefinitely for the sake of generating huge flows of money for everyone to spend like rock stars.

I don't think it's just Americans who lose sight of the big picture in favor of narrow desire to increase cash flows, though. The European anti-Austerity movement, for example, chose to brush aside any interest or concerns about incompatibility between EU middle-class standards of living and sustainability. They simply want and expect a certain lifestyle, which costs relatively lots in terms of GDP, so they will support unsustainable practices insofar as those generate the GDP desired to produce the lifestyle they deem acceptable. They simply don't want to revise and adapt their expectations of material living to what's sustainable. Maybe the Chinese will ultimately lead the way in rationality and others will follow suit despite anti-Chinese cultural exceptionalism. That would be the right thing to do, but what would cause people to do the right thing?

cooker

True, but even if these kinds of car free communities ONLY take off in China, that would be huge progress. However, I'm not as pessimistic about North America as you. Pro-motoring/pro-sprawl groups like the American Dream Coalition are already using all their propaganda skills to demonize densification, and smart growth etc. and no doubt will try to marginalize any Chinese examples as you say, but we're already seeing some progress in cities being retrofitted to encourage pedestrians, cyclists and public transit in spite of them, so at least some citizens, politicians and developers can see the bigger picture, and the greater good.

Roody

North America and Europe are basically done with building new cities. But in most parts of the world, building new cities is going on all the time. I read somewhere that China has built 500 new cities in the last 50 years. Hopefully, less developed nations will catch up with them soon. Therefore, building a "carfree laboratory" or experimental carfree city in China is one of the most important innovations that I've seen recently.

cooker

We're not done with building suburbs, or even rebuilding city cores over time as they evolve, so if the China design is a success we'll have opportunities to borrow their ideas.