World's Largest Building Opens in China

China's New Century Global Center

Perhaps the most striking sign of China's construction boom is the recent opening of the New Century Global Center in Chengdu. Most of the space inside of this building will be devoted to retail shopping, but the Center will also feature a university, offices, an IMAX Theatre, a luxury hotel, a mediterranean village, an artificial beach, a giant pirate ship, a skating rink and an amusement park. At 18,000,000 square feet, the building is about three timex the size of the Pentagon and could reportedly house 20 of Sydney's Opera House.

Exterior View

Main Entrance

It is truly challenging to capture in photos just how massive this new mall is, but what is far more interesting is what this behemoth signifies for China and for the world as a whole.

Peak Suburban Appeal

Over the last few years the United States has begun to move away from the suburban ideal and interest in urban revival has started to pick up momentum. In many ways, China is lagging a bit behind in this trend and is currently experiencing a construction boom of unprecedented proportions. The suburban malls of the 1990's and 2000's are slowly losing their grasp on American society, but it seems that China is on a different page.

At a time when Chinese cities are languishing in off-the-charts pollution, many urban Chinese have no desire to be outside and experience the true essence of their cities. It is simply too hazardous to do so. So naturally, creating a city sized space indoors is one way to solve this problem. Rather than experiencing the urban grid, residents of Chengdu can literally hide from it. In fact, the building is so massive that while you are swimming in the 54,000 square foot self-contained ocean, you may even forget that you are inside. 

Love it or Hate It?

Whatever this massive building is, it certainly has become a polarizing topic among the Chinese. No one can argue that the design and construction of this massive mall are not beautiful. One could live an entire life inside this structure and have nearly all of their needs met; one of the only things that the mall does not contain is a hospital, at least not yet! This new mall is the prime example of a one stop shop for everything.

But is this really a good thing?

I certainly don't think so. While it is true that even I enjoy a trip to the mall to escape the harsh New England winters, I think that as a society we can do a better job at creating authentic points of interests. Giant malls cannot continue to be the epicenter of leisure time because there are so many other things to do. I think that a truly beautiful thing would be for China's cities to clean up the air and create friendly, walkable and living cities that draw residents organically, not just with sales promotions. It seems to me that this mall is a giant step in the wrong direction. 

End of the Exurbs

Bedroom Communities are Becoming Extinct

The last economic recession has exaggerated many already occurring trends within American society. As the real estate bubble collapsed and incomes fell, homeownership fell from Americans priority lists. For the first time, housing sizes started to decline and foreclosure rates ticked up. The insatiable search for cheap land far from cities upon which to build affluent communities came to a crashing halt. Suddenly and poignantly, exurbs fell apart.

This is a screen shot from Google Maps. This is a suburban development north of Atlanta. During the recession some houses were built and people moved in, but the community was never finished. The people who do live here need to drive upwards of one hour to reach downtown Atlanta. Scenes like this litter the country. 

People began to realize that it was not sustainable to live further and further from cities. Highways became increasingly congested and commutes lengthened. Suddenly it was no longer appealing to drive for two hours each day just to get to and from work. For this reason, three years after the end of the recession, these areas still remain unfinished. The American Dream has changed and far flung communities have fallen apart. Rather than being a part of a thriving commuter town, many who have remained in the furthest suburbs have found themselves living in quiet ghost towns. 

Here are some other pictures of communities that have been stopped dead in their tracks. These photos are screen shots from Google Maps of exurban Phoenix and Las Vegas.

Ending Suburban Sprawl

The American dream: go to college, get a job, move to a nice house in the suburbs. Like this.

Here is a picture of a Phoenix suburb. Houses sprawl endlessly into the desert taking up more and more space and moving further from the urban core. An even more dramatic example is this picture of suburban Los Angeles.

When will it stop? It has become extremely challenging to actually move between the suburbs and the city center. 

Suburbs are extremely inefficient and cannot continue to spread outwards from city centers. In Los Angeles, it takes 30 minutes without traffic to reach downtown from the outer edge of the city. Considering suburbs that extend outside of the city limits, commuters can often drive upwards of an hour to work each way. Not only is it annoying to spend two or more hours commuting a day, it is unnecessary. 

It seems that Americans are finally feeling fed up with the suburbs and beginning to move back to city centers. As cities grow from the center, they can offer more and better services to their residents. Living in a community like the ones pictured in these photos is becoming an unattractive venture. I hope that the trend of downtown urbanization continues over time.

Decline of the Automobile

Cars have been an important if not essential element of America life for the past 100 years. Every decade, Americans owned more cars and drove more miles per person. That is, until around 2005. Over the past 5-10 years, Americans for the first time have begun to reduce their total distance per person and car ownership per capita. While some may attribute the decrease to a turbulent economic climate, I believe that it is actually the sign of the beginnings of a paradigm shift. I expect that over the next several decades, this trend will continue and eventually cars will become much less important than they are today. But why?

Suburbs are retreating back into cities. Rather than moving into new developments further and further out into the exurbs, Americans increasingly are relocating to urban centers. This can be attributed to many things such as job opportunities, commute times, etc. However this means that if this trend continues, over time fewer and fewer people will need to commute long distances from semi-rural locations into cities to work. Instead, cities themselves will grow much faster than the rate of population growth. This will encourage cities to build up methods of public transportation because demand will rise and many cities, such as New York or Boston, cannot handle more cars on the streets. 

Over the past ten years gas prices have become increasingly unpredictable. Tensions are hot in the Middle East and Americans felt the effects of several dramatic spikes in gas prices. For most people, income remains constant and many expenses do as well. It can be stressful, particularly for those who do not make a comfortable amount of money, not to be able to predict expenses for gas. Additionally, there seems to be an emerging trend of environmental conscientiousness which discourages excessive driving. 

The End of the Semi-Urban Landscape

I have a theory that over the next 100 or so years many of the semi-urban towns that have come to populate areas such as New England will fade away. First I want to describe what I mean by a semi-urban town because this moniker is not in itself descriptive enough. I am referring to areas with somewhere between 25,000 and 75,000 residents that have many of the expanded municipal functions of larger cities such as hospitals, shopping centers or public transportation systems. Additionally, these towns must be between 30 and 90 minutes from a larger city by car.

The trend of urbanization over the past 150 years seems to have encouraged the development of these small city-like areas. In New England specifically, larger cities have these almost suburban satellite cities that fill up much of the landscape. An example of this is somewhere like Amherst, Massachusetts. Amherst is about 45 minutes outside of Springfield, which is the hub of Western Massachusetts with about 150,000 people. At this distance, residents of Amherst generally would not commute to Springfield to work or for other needs such as visiting a hospital or shopping. However, the communities that are between Amherst and Springfield naturally direct their traffic towards Springfield for their needs as it is within a reasonable driving distance. Effectively, this keeps areas like Amherst from developing into true cities because they are close enough areas like Springfield to remain in their shadows. Small cities like Amherst will never have the population to support first rate services that are offered in larger cities.

I think that these small cities can be traced back to when a much higher percentage of the population was employed in farming. Small farming centers would develop naturally and evenly spaced throughout a belt of farms. People may live in the central development but many would work in the farms. Because so many people were employed in farming, the development of large cities was more limited. Over time however as people moved out of the farming occupation, they remained in these small satellite cities and much of the land that was formerly farmland became suburbs of large cities.

It seems that there is an emerging trend in the United States of people for the first time choosing to leave the suburbs for the central city that the suburb revolves around. This seems to be due to a number of factors including rising transportation costs, increased commuter traffic and perhaps a decline of crime rates in cities. As people move back to central cities, these cities will be able to offer even more services  and become more efficient. Eventually, smaller cities outside of the suburban ring will begin to suffer and I think that eventually many of these areas will greatly diminish in importance.