thames town - London Meets Shanghai

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So Thames Town is like Disney, and Buicks are like the Biltmore Estate?
 
czsz said:
No, my point is exactly that they're not. Fairy tale European villages don't connote wealth to most up and coming Chinese: if they did, there'd be more of them. These things connote escape. They're tailored for a much narrower demographic who are titillated by the idea of pretending to live in Europe because it's Europe, not because it's seen as more affluent.
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But we are talking Shanghai, not China. It is still full of British, American, and French estates in the concession zone. These are now highly desirable addresses for the wealthy Chinese. It is a city that has been a fusion of East and West since the 1800s. Sure communist China crushed the non regulation entry into Shanghai after WWII which all but ended it's uniquely international flavor, but it retains it's history like no other big city in China.

The burgeoning Shanghai middle class is not titillated by the idea of pretending to live in a fairy tale--if anything, it's nostalgia for pre-WWII Shanghai glory days. Not a whole lot different from Poundbury, Celebration. Note that I've left Seaside out of this as there is nothing nostalgic about it--often misunderstood, it is a modern showcase of highly relevant architecture and design.
 
I believe I addressed this above. Go walk around Shanghai. The colonial architecture is vintage 19th/early 20th century - big grey and brick neoclassical, gothic revival, and art deco buildings. A medieval half-timbered market town with winding cobblestone streets is not something that has an organic connection to Shanghai's past.
 
Maybe. I don't see how an architectural form that's completely alien to Shanghai can be embraced as "nostalgia for pre-WWII glory days" (especially since most Shanghainese probably consider the glory days to be...right now). Just because the city has "been a fusion of East and West" doesn't mean that this specific Western design vocabulary is less of a novelty there. Seaside and Poundbury actually look somewhat like an old English village and an old Florida town (though I'd argue that both of these are also novelties, albeit to much less of an extent than Thames Town).
 
Well, novelty is one of the things that modern architecture is all about --and always has been. You can find your novelty here or you can find your novelty there. :cool:
 
ablarc said:
Well, novelty is one of the things that modern architecture is all about --and always has been. You can find your novelty here or you can find your novelty there. :cool:
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modern or Modern?
 
Do they have a fake Las Vegas? A fake Manhattan? How about a fake Hong Kong?
 
I have to admit I'm intrigued by the idea of a fake Las Vegas with a fake New York, New York inside.
 
There's a branch of the Venetian in Macau.

Venice has become a franchise.
 
"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." -- Charles Caleb Colton
 
But the rot and grime are perfect! They'll look as old as medieval villages in no time, just like Warsaw's rebuilt Old Town during the pollution-belching communist period.
 
This kind of ties into that article.
I got this on: http://www.infrastructurist.com/

Is China on the Brink of a Full-Fledged Property Collapse?

Kenneth Rogoff, the Harvard University professor and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is not optimistic about China. He predicts that the country?s property market is teetering on the edge of a ?collapse? that inevitably will hit the banking system as well.

And he?s not the only voice of doom on the horizon. Analysts at Standard Chartered PLC are forecasting that property prices in China?s big cities will drop as much as 30% from their mid-April levels, all in the second half of 2010. To prepare, China?s five largest state-controlled banks are planning to raise as much as $54.5 billion of capital by selling bonds and shares ? this is after they extended record loans last year to support a government-led stimulus plan.

The world markets are certainly worried about China: Last week investors sent the Shanghai Composite Index, China?s benchmark stock index to a 6.7% loss, its worst loss in more than a year ? though it recovered 1.9% of that today on speculation that recent losses were excessive. It?s been quite a roller coaster, given that the Chinese government said the country?s economy expanded at an 11.9% annual rate in the first quarter ? its biggest increase since 2007.

For years now, China has been a prime example of extreme modernism at work ? while the consumerist middle class continues to grow, all the while demanding more cars, houses, and space, the government has poured billions into massive building projects and infrastructure upgrades. And the rate of growth has caused plenty of hiccups ? take the ?abandoned cities? trend that?s been sweeping the nation. And while the U.S. financial markets have certainly been grateful recently for China?s continued prosperity while the rest of the world tanks, there?s no guarantee that making such drastic changes to your country?s infrastructure and, correspondingly, your culture won?t have serious repercussions.

The Chinese government isn?t turning a blind eye to the maybe-definitely-possible housing crisis ? so far authorities have raised minimum mortgage rates and down-payment ratios for some home purchases, and they may also institute a trial property tax. Meanwhile, the rest of the world (and certainly everyone on Wall Street) will have to wait and see what happens.
 
GW2500 said:
This kind of ties into that article.
I got this on: http://www.infrastructurist.com/

Is China on the Brink of a Full-Fledged Property Collapse?

Kenneth Rogoff, the Harvard University professor and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is not optimistic about China. He predicts that the country?s property market is teetering on the edge of a ?collapse? that inevitably will hit the banking system as well.

And he?s not the only voice of doom on the horizon. Analysts at Standard Chartered PLC are forecasting that property prices in China?s big cities will drop as much as 30% from their mid-April levels, all in the second half of 2010. To prepare, China?s five largest state-controlled banks are planning to raise as much as $54.5 billion of capital by selling bonds and shares ? this is after they extended record loans last year to support a government-led stimulus plan.

The world markets are certainly worried about China: Last week investors sent the Shanghai Composite Index, China?s benchmark stock index to a 6.7% loss, its worst loss in more than a year ? though it recovered 1.9% of that today on speculation that recent losses were excessive. It?s been quite a roller coaster, given that the Chinese government said the country?s economy expanded at an 11.9% annual rate in the first quarter ? its biggest increase since 2007.

For years now, China has been a prime example of extreme modernism at work ? while the consumerist middle class continues to grow, all the while demanding more cars, houses, and space, the government has poured billions into massive building projects and infrastructure upgrades. And the rate of growth has caused plenty of hiccups ? take the ?abandoned cities? trend that?s been sweeping the nation. And while the U.S. financial markets have certainly been grateful recently for China?s continued prosperity while the rest of the world tanks, there?s no guarantee that making such drastic changes to your country?s infrastructure and, correspondingly, your culture won?t have serious repercussions.

The Chinese government isn?t turning a blind eye to the maybe-definitely-possible housing crisis ? so far authorities have raised minimum mortgage rates and down-payment ratios for some home purchases, and they may also institute a trial property tax. Meanwhile, the rest of the world (and certainly everyone on Wall Street) will have to wait and see what happens.
Click to expand...

I'll bite and hope you're not trolling. People have been predicting the collapse of China's economy for DECADES and nothing happened, in fact, the economic growth has only gotten faster and larger in absolute terms. Property prices have already decreased considerably since their 2008 peak, it didn't have much effect on economic growth (which has only gotten faster since then). China's property boom is based on strong fundamentals, such as the amazing pace of China's urbanization, requiring the construction of millions of new apartments. Prices have gone up excessively, but the demand will not stop for a few decades. Also, the stock exchange also has little relation to or effect on China's economy. A very low percentage of the population participates it, and the amount of money going through the stock exchange is nothing compared to China's economy as a whole. Most of China's major companies are listed in Hong Kong, anyway. The truth is, China's government is one of the few in the world that knows what it is doing on economic matters (others include Brazil, Singapore, UAE).
 
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