My Living Laboratory

As promised, I will now address my time in Beijing with a series of posts about the sights, food, and learning I experienced in Beijing. In doing so, however, I will break with my trend of handling things chronologically and instead discuss various topics starting today with the most important things I learned from China’s capital city.

Perhaps one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in my time here is that everyday no matter where I go or what I do, I am learning about the culture and society of China and drawing conclusions and creating impressions that inform my view on sustainability here. When you’re studying environmental buildings and sustainable cities, perhaps one of the most useful things is just to get out in the city and see how people interact with public and private spaces, with each other, and with the plants, animals, and glimpses of nature that the city affords. From these, you learn a lot about what needs to be done to make cities more sustainable and keep the aspects of our current megalopolises that are sustainable. Base on this idea of learning from wandering, this post is about some of my more recent musings about urban planning, sustainability, and Chinese attitudes toward the environment from my time in Beijing and the surrounding area. In doing so, I will take things by location—where I was wandering when pondering these topics. As a disclaimer, these are my own personal thoughts and are not backed by any evidence or research other than anecdotes, so please take them as you will, and I’m happy to entertain discussion and debate on any of my opinions!

The Beijing Zoo
You may wonder what a zoo has to teach about a city. Certainly you can learn about nature and animals—what does the lion eat, how long do monkeys live, how tall is a giraffe, etc.—but it’s the animals that are on display, not the people…right?

Well, yes and no. Yes, certainly the animals are on display, but have you ever stopped and watched how people interact with the animals in the zoo? I think you can understand a lot about their attitude towards the wild just in a few minutes of observation. Not to mention, the whole zoo itself is a window into the societal view on issues of humane treatment of animals which reveals a bit about the environmental mindset of the nation.

Before I continue further, I have to say that the zoo was the place where I felt the most kinship and also for once was not the main attraction. I lost out to monkeys and big cats, though there were a few animals from which my red hair and beard drew attention. At times I felt that I should be behind a fence instead of in front of it, and so felt a kinship with the animals being gawked at. However, to digress for a moment, it wasn’t as bad as my later trip to the Three Gorges Dam (to be documented in a later post) where I was distracted from my viewing by a woman constantly yelling “hello” at me just to quickly snap a photo of my annoyed face when I finally turned and then squeal with glee, point and loudly exclaim “laowei” (foreigner) while clapping her hands like a 5-year old child at Disneyland. That made me feel like a zoo animal, and I’ll explain why.

If you’ve been to large zoos in the States—Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Antonio are a few I’ve frequented—you notice that most visitors are respectful. They are often loud, but not always, and not too loud, and for the most part keep a respectful distance from the fence or glass. Sure there is the occasional kid who runs up and bangs on the animals, but usually either a keeper rushes in to end this behavior, or the parent sternly picks up the child and teaches them not to harass the animals. There is no feeding lest the keepers see and remove you from the park, and if the occasional spoiled family allows their little brat to continually bang on the lion’s cage, other visitors look down in scorn on the disrespectful child and his undisciplined parents.

All of this changes in Beijing. Here, I was the exception, by which I mean that I and the other white people at the zoo that day were the only ones who kept our voices at a respectful level, kept distance from the cages, stood in awe and appreciation of the creatures, and refrained from feeding the beasts. The typical Chinese visitor would run up to the fence or glass, and if the animal was not looking at them, begin banging, yelling, and even throwing things into the cage until the animal turned its head enough, looked sadly out at the crowd, had its picture taken accompanied by squeals and shouts of joy from the successful photographer, and then resignedly returned to its rest. The victorious visitor would then loudly proclaim his achievement to those around, and rush off to the next exhibit to begin again. And what did the keepers do about this? Nothing—absolutely nothing. At the elephant enclosure, I stood and watched as visitor after visitor hurled fruits at the massive animals over the “No Feeding” sign and directly in front of the eyes of the keeper sitting lazily on his folding chair. During the whole scene he moved only to spew a nice spitwad onto the dirt at his feet. Feeding too was a common occurrence. If an animal got close enough to the fence, people would reach in holding out corn, fruit, lettuce, carrots, or even leaves they had pulled off of nearby plants for the animal to eat. A quick pet and photo, and they were giddy and on their way. It mattered not whether the animal, say a sun bear, should really be eating popcorn—if it would, it was getting thrown in the cage. And if a visitor ran out of “real food,” then perhaps the deer might suddenly have an affinity for the leaves off of the tree across the way.

As a quick aside, someone in Beijing with whom I chatted mentioned that in China, there was a lack of respect for rules that people do not widely understand. For instance, in museums there are benches and signs proclaiming not to lie on the benches. According to my source, these are adopted because Western museums have similar proclamations, and so the Chinese museums, wanting to be world-class feel they too must adopt the regulations. But without understanding why the rules exist, both the museum security and the museum visitors feel no need to follow these rules. Perhaps this same force is at work in the zoo, and the discussion below might shed a little light on why people in the zoo don’t understand the “No feeding” rules. And frankly, the keepers on duty likely were only hired to sit and enforce rules or control crowds, not because of scientific backgrounds. I have a feeling those minds are behind the scenes.

Those were my observations, so what did they mean? And what did they have to do with green buildings and sustainable cities? Well first, if we compare the behaviors of the two groups—zoogoers in America and zoogoers in China—it is clear that there is a greater respect for the animals as intrinsic beings in America. People in America respect the animals more for their own nature, their abilities, their power, or put more broadly, because the animals are conscious beings with sensitivities and moral standing unto themselves, at least to a certain degree. On the other hand, the Chinese experience is more of viewing the animal as a form of entertainment. The animal in the cage is a means to entertain the viewer. It is not important or special because it has value unto itself but because it can provide value to the viewer. Since that value is increased by the animal turning to face the camera at the appropriate moment, it follows that the viewer should hoot, holler, and bang to get make that happen—it’s a simple calculation that by yelling and banging, maximum value is achieved. The calculation in America is different because it includes the feelings of the animal. The difference is one of seeing the animals as having value independent of their relationship to humans, meaning that if no visitors were at the zoo the animals would still be valuable, and as seeing them through an anthropocentric lens whereby without providing value to visitors the animals have no value. Now perhaps I give a bit too much credit to the average American zoo visitor—there is still an anthropocentric nature to American zoos. People want to see the animals because they want to have some entertainment, but I still would argue that the treatment of the animals still arises out of an understanding that the animals have value in their own right. Even if the zoo satisfies a human curiosity, the animals are not viewed as mere entertainment.

If we expand now this assessment of Chinese views on animals, it has important implications for environmental movements in China versus American environmentalism. In America, the idea of environmental protection, be it for species, forests, or resource-saving, can take advantage of this feeling that animals have standing in their own right. It is a broader indicator of the willingness of Americans to perform environmental actions because of the benefit to others, be they animal or human, or to the ecosystem as a whole. There is a greater willingness to conserve for the sake of forests or species which the person may never have seen but for which the person has respect. The argument of conservation of resources to prevent habitat loss, biodiversity loss, and other concepts remote and separate from human life, especially in cities, can gain ground. For green buildings, this means that there is an innate greater willingness to adopt new strategies and technologies to save not just money on a personal level but to protect the intangibles that we value. I won’t get into a debate on why we value forests, biodiversity, etc. and whether it is anthropocentric or not, but if the reader is interested, there is a wealth of essays on the subject.

In the Chinese framework, the behavior I observed at the zoo reveals that the strategies of American environmentalism cannot work here. The lack of care for animals and the environment beyond the value to humans means that in China we cannot make the argument to conserve for the sake of biodiversity, global warming prevention, or conservation. Instead, we have to make the argument on an anthropocentric ground. We must relate the issue of resource conservation in buildings (energy, water, materials) to direct negative or positive effects for the end-user, developer, or owner/operator. Only be arguing that resource0saving will directly benefit the person to whom we are making the appeal can we expect to get anywhere. Certainly there are some in China for whom the conservation argument would be influential—in fact I’ve met some of them—but for the masses, those who I encountered at the zoo, this would not fly.

My experience at the zoo catalyzed this thinking for me, and it has been supported by claims from several of my interviewees. A market study conducted for an NGO whose representatives I met with found that pushing conservation required tying it to the family, not abstract ideas like climate change. One cleantech entrepreneur told me that a company in China, after extensive market research, found that tying environmental issues back to family impacts was the only way to actually influence daily behavior. To this end, they created an advertisement that attempted to “close the loop”: Fade in on a mother cooking vegetables for dinner while her children and husband work at the table behind, eating other vegetables. Close-up as she flips the switch for the light even with ample daylight. Quick cut to the electrons zooming through copper wires back to a coal-fired power plant, belching smoke into the air. The smoke collects in a cloud and drops acid rain all over a crop of fresh vegetables which then is put in a truck and taken to the city, where the mother buys them for dinner.

There was another observation from the zoo that really stuck with me. In the zoos I’ve visited in America, and even in Reykjavik, Iceland, the enclosures for the animals were rather natural and always are trying to be improved. However, here in Beijing, the enclosures were not at all natural. In fact, some were no better than concrete rooms with a rope or tire for the animal’s entertainment. These deplorable conditions coupled with the constant banging and harassment by visitors led to some rather sad looks on the faces of the animals. Some will argue that animals lack feelings (perhaps many of those banging will), but take a look in the eyes of an orangutan in a small concrete cell and tell me that it hasn’t given up hope and been filled with a deep sadness.

The picture below is a chimp, not an orangutan--the orangutan picture didn't come out well, but these chimps have similar looks.

Next to it, a sign from 5 years ago claimed the zoo was working to make the orangutan happy by finding it a friend and moving it to a different exhibit area. I don’t personally have much hope. Now these conditions could be attributed easily, and perhaps rightly, to China’s status as a developing nation. However, the claims the government makes of the Beijing Zoo as being world class fall far short because of exhibits like these. Though they were able to build a brand new, expensive aquarium, they have not fixed the obviously poor exhibits existing in the main zoo. Instead, what it seems like is that in an attempt to attain “world-class” status, they have understood this to mean that more animal species is better. So enclosures get smaller, subdivided to make room for a new neighbor, each one of which raises the zoo a notch in the mind of the government. I say this based on the number of times I saw the species and individual animal count proclaimed on zoo materials both online and in print. It seemed to be the cornerstone of the zoo. The question though is at what cost for the animals do they now have the ability to boast this number? And will policy ever become enlightened to the point where real quality spaces are provided for the animals?

Perhaps what I found most appalling was the nature of the panda houses. Here is the national animal, a proclaimed international symbol and ambassador for China, housed in what appeared to me to be an entirely unnatural environment. The first two animals I saw were housed in larger outdoor enclosures with grass, trees, and rocks. But inside, the faux-environment took over and the size of the enclosure diminished. However, perhaps the biggest surprise was the enclosure with three animals which seemed an entirely unnatural world of hard dirt, concrete, and rocks. And this was the new panda house built for the Olympics.

For the amount of care Beijing takes when choosing where pandas are allowed to go, they seem to neglect the importance of creating a natural environment for their national animal at home. Whereas at the San Diego Zoo the pandas can climb trees and rest, wander through forests of bamboo and hide from visitors if necessary, none of these comforts are afforded to Beijing’s animals. I expected at least for these exhibits to be quality, but alas, they were only slightly better than some of the others.

So why do I mention this observation? I think that this is indicative of two phenomena that occur in the realm of green buildings as well. First, the lack of local government knowledge on environmental and scientific topics is evidenced in both green building regulations and implementation and here at the zoo. Since the zoo is administered by the Beijing city government rather than the national government, perhaps the failure to maintain proper exhibits can be attributed to a lack of knowledge or understanding at this level. Even if the federal government understands the importance of good housing for pandas, it may not translate to the local government. This phenomenon is also true in climate change action in China. Even if the central government understands the importance of climate change and proclaims a need for action, it is left to the local governments to implement, and they are often given little direction, only a target they must meet. The result is poor implementation and actions that may look good on paper or in one statistic but really are poor in another. For example, saying to a province that they must cut emissions intensity results in shutting down factories rather than comprehensive reform of building codes, factory equipment, and transportation planning policies. Similarly, a directive to make the Beijing Zoo world-class could result in a drastic increase in the number of species at the expense of quality habitats.

This latter conjecture is evidence for the other phenomenon I began to consider—the tendency of the government to strive for targets that sound good but perhaps do not stand up to scrutiny. Again one can point to emissions intensity targets as evidence for this in the environmental arena, but another example would be the central government directive that all new buildings must be 50% more energy efficient. Sounds great and progressive, right? But the question is 50% more efficient than what? I’ve not yet heard a good statement from my interviewees of what the baseline is for this claim. Some have said a “mid-1980s building” which leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Others have just rolled their eyes and flat out said that there is no baseline—there is no data at this point with which to create a baseline. I wonder if the new panda house is 50% more efficient due to its lack of trees and greenery to be watered?

The Hutong District vs. The Central Business District
For my stay in Beijing, I was conveniently, and quite nicely located in the hutong district of the city—the old heart of the capital where stone dwellings still tell the tale of the multi-generational family lifestyle that defined Chinese housing for centuries. Though my hostel was located in the basement of a Super 8 Motel (not very historical), if I just stepped out the door I found myself surrounded by history and a different world than the rest of Beijing affords. On one of my first days in Beijing, therefore, I decided to take a stroll through this living fossil of a community en route to Beijing’s newest shimmering star, it’s Central Business District.

The two areas provided quite the contrast. In the hutongs, narrow alleys twist past walled courtyards facing one another, punctuated by shops, restaurants, and families drying clothes on racks outside their own walls, chatting as they do so. Life happens here as lower-income families, the primary residents save for a few upscale hotels, go about their daily lives, congregate in the evenings, and cast a watchful eye on those who pass on foot up and down the narrow roads.

For temporary residents like myself, the hutong residents provide a vital service—food, souvenirs, convenience stores, and other amenities within easy reach. Even for city dwellers, the streets of the hutong district are a treasure trove of delectable sweets, cheap traditional eats, and quick fixes to bikes, cars, and any other device that might have broken. The residents provide necessary, low-cost services for the city in a manner that is not replicated in other parts of town. As I strolled the campus of Tsinghua University with Professor Terrence Curry, he pointed out the hutongs on the campus property there too. He said for faculty and students, the legacy hutongs provide a place for a cheap meal, quick snack, or even photocopying services.

The residents may not earn much, but they are resourceful enough to identify a niche in the campus life which they can fill and take advantage of it. This secures a living for them and satisfies the needs of students and teachers alike.

But back in my hutong area, a short walk east will carry you out of the old city and into a land of broad boulevards dividing rows of towers reflecting the diffuse light of Beijing’s smoggy environs. As I strolled these avenues, craning my neck to see up the likes of the ifc towers, the CCTV building, the Kerry Center, and others, I was struck by how strong the contrast is with the hutongs.

Here, broad avenues give preference to the car over the pedestrian—as a result you cannot cross the street except at corners, and even then it seems like a marathon to carry yourself over the 6, 8, or even 12 lanes of surface-level streets (for reference, the 405 freeway is only now being widened to accommodate 12 lanes—6 each—way in some parts, and as the 5 snakes its way through downtown it narrows to 4 lanes in some locations).

Now, before I continue I should state that it was during the National Holidays when I visited the CBD, so businesses were all closed, but still, I saw only one four other people on the streets of the CBD in the hour I strolled around. This despite the presence of malls at the foot of every tower, many with escalators continuously ferrying the ghosts of shoppers between floors in the absence of a single corporeal customer. I could imagine the architecture proposals here boasting the vibrant community that would be created with the mixed-use hotel, business center, and mall. This is a tenet of every architecture proposal these days it seems, and too often is proclaimed as the silver bullet for the problems of sustainability in the urban center. Yet clearly mixed-use is not the necessary and sufficient—if it were, then why didn’t I see anyone in the “vibrant city center of Beijing” on days when freedom from labor should have called on shoppers and hotel visitors to frequent the malls?

The two contrasting observations on this day began for me a train of thought on urban planning in China’s cities, and really cities at large. Here we see the new and old, the deserted and vibrant, the car-centric and pedestrian side-by-side and have a chance to comment on their effectiveness. Drawing on some insights as well from my conversations in Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai, I will now highlight some elements of planning that I think can contribute to or detract from sustainable cities.

Let’s start first with the issue of transportation in the city center. I think that every architect and engineer these days, having learned from the plague of urban flight experienced by cities like Detroit and Los Angeles, will expound the need for a vibrant city center—a place that people want to live and work. But vibrancy is more than creating a few self-contained developments with multiple types of spaces. At the core of a vibrant city is a way to move between spaces easily. The most ideal way of achieving this is by creating a space that is completely walkable—somewhere that people can just move from where they work to where they live or have fun without using any mode of transport aside from their own two feet. Not only is this more sustainable (because it uses less energy) but it increases the amount of human interaction and the interaction between the human and nature or the surroundings. Too often we move through a city without realizing what is around us. Part of this is due to poor street level attractions—I know in suburban Los Angeles, walking around means passing house after house set back from the street with only minor variations in the facades. Yet part of it is also that too many city centers give preference to cars over people. We leave work and hop in the car where we are in our own, isolated world just to go home to an apartment or house where we have little interaction with our neighbors typically.

In Beijing, the CBD is certainly this way. Despite the fact that in each building or block there is street-level programming, the wide roads divide these to the point where it is daunting to move from one side of the street to the other. It discourages people from changing buildings after work, and I find it unlikely that people would live and work in the same exact building. That would make for a dull life and a small world indeed if you just took an elevator between the two. If you contrast this with two of Shanghai’s live/work spaces—the French Concession and West Nanjing Rd.—there is a clear difference.

In the Shanghai spaces, narrower streets and smaller blocks allow for people to easily move from mall to mall, shop to shop without feeling like they are ants in a car’s playground. I feel as though I’m channeling Jane Jacobs a bit by advocating short blocks and narrow streets, but her wisdom rings from 1960s New York to modern-day China. Just watching the masses flow through Shanghai even on what locals would call a “light” or “empty” day shows how this city got it right while Beijing got it wrong. In the flurry of development leading up to the Olympics, roads were widened and the pedestrian essentially banished to the outskirts. Though the subway was expanded, its crowds always pushing and shoving deter some from riding—this isn’t a conjecture, but anecdotal evidence from one of my interviewees. Beijing’s traffic planning has been criticized by the public simply because it makes life hard for cyclists and pedestrians in many parts of the city. In fact, it’s the older areas, the ones the government didn’t “plan” that are the most vibrant for pedestrians—areas with narrow streets and short blocks like the hutongs in which I lived.

Unfortunately, it seems as though new developments are adopting the Beijing model. In Shanghai, it is the very suburban Pudong new area that most closely reflects Beijing’s model. Aside from a mall on the edge of the Huangpi River, the rest of Pudong is deserted come sundown as pedestrians flee the financial centers in cars and on the subway to areas that are more walkable. They leave behind the wide avenues and set back buildings in favor of shops that front on the narrower streets of Puxi. In the new economic and industrial zones, requirements on green space demand that buildings be set back a fair distance from roads thus making these districts less interesting for pedestrians. Furthermore, the planning of these areas allots large blocks of land to companies for single uses, meaning that walkable districts are all but impossible. And in Tianjin, the Binhai new area looks like a mini model of Pudong already with wide avenues and set back, fenced in warehouses. All commercial practice is concentrated in a single mall. At this rate, China will lock itself into much higher car use just by virtue of its planning. By essentially banishing the pedestrian from its new cities, China is creating a dangerously carbon-intensive society that not even good public transit can save. Without a walkable pedestrian area, social life will drastically change, and the car will become even more prevalent in China’s cities.

Now to address the question of the architect’s silver bullet—mixed-use or live/work to reduce emissions from transportation. What does that mean, and how can it be done well? As I said before, every planner will propose this scheme, and every developer, seeing the money available in such a scheme, will greedily concur, provided that the live/work lofts are for the yuppies and business leaders. This gives rise to the mall/hotel/serviced apartment/office space model that has popped up all over China, and the world. But what is missing in all four of those uses is not the lack of mixed programming—no one can dispute that—but rather the lack of mixed social strata. This is a very difficult thing to balance. Wandering Tsinghua, it is easy to be appalled by the sudden transition from monumental, Jeffersonian campus buildings to a low-income hutong area, but then you realize that the two really coincide perfectly. In fact, it would be hard to find a better place to put the residents of the hutongs. They have a secure way to make a living, they perhaps can be inspired by the surrounding university atmosphere to achieve higher education and goals, and they provide a valuable set of services to the campus community. While I suppose you could in principle replace these hutongs with new buildings and businesses, the resulting atmosphere would be vastly different, the prices could not be the same (they would have to be higher in the new building simply to pay rent for the space), and you would homogenize the population, losing the social benefit to the low-income residents.

But can such a spontaneous mixture as exists at Tsinghua be easily replicated? After all, the current situation arose simply because the university expanded to engulf the existing hutongs. I think this is a very difficult question to answer. In principle it is possible to build low-income hosuing in conjunction with more expensive housing and commercial space, but inevitably as demand increases for this space, so do the prices. So what is intended as low-income space becomes higher income. In fact, China does require that a certain amount of floor space in new developments be for low-income families. However what happens is that these smaller apartments end up getting sold in pairs or threes to a single owner who in turn combines them into a larger apartment. So while in principle mixed social strata sounds good and may be feasible, in practice it has yet to work well in China. The question also is would people want mixed social spaces? Is not it almost instinctual for many middle and upper class citizens to look down on the low-income families? Would they welcome such families to their neighborhoods? Are people at Tsinghua just enlightened since they are academics and therefore supposedly more liberal? These are all questions to which there are not good answers but are worth pondering. Think about it for yourself—think about if you can come up with a way of combining low-income housing with middle or higher income housing in a productive manner whereby there are benefits to all residents either socially, economically, or otherwise.

As a final note on this subtopic, Tsinghua’s hutongs are endangered. Part of the issue as well with low-income housing in China is that of land tenure. Since land is not owned but rather is rented in periods of 40-60 years, when that time is up, if the land value has increased significantly then the old owner may be unable to afford it. Particularly if your land was worthless when you were awarded it, you were poor and kept living in your hutong, and then the top university in China sprang up around you during that time. Tsinghua has already outbid these residents for the rights to their land as soon as the titles run out, and judging by the brick wall being built roughly around the hutong area while I was there, I have a feeling they aren’t going to keep the area as is.

The Great Wall
Roaming along this massive stone structure slowly snaking its way over hills and valleys and out of sight, you can’t help but wonder how the structure has withstood the test of time and remains even today, albeit a little worse for wear. It’s easy to look at this, contrast it in your mind with reports of Chinese apartment buildings collapsing under construction, whistle, and say “Man, they just don’t build ‘em like they used to.” However this isn’t an entirely fair statement—you’d be contrasting the forced construction over hundreds of years of a defensive battlement from locally-quarried stone with buildings thrown up out of necessity by crews of unskilled laborers in need of a little more money in mere months or weeks out of mass-produced concrete. However, just the sight of such an enduring structure does make you stop and wonder about the rapid pace of construction and reconstruction in China.

Perhaps the single biggest factor contributing to a building’s sustainability from a resource standpoint is its longevity. Emissions and resources are heavily used in the construction phase of a project. Yet when we look at these emissions, we often talk about them amortized over the lifetime of the building. That means that the resource intensity of the building decreases with each additional year that the building stays standing. Furthermore, it means that additional resources do not have to be consumed to create another building in its place. Yet in China, the quality of construction means that despite stated design lifetimes of 40-60 years, after 20 years buildings often have to be replaced because the quality or performance have deteriorated so greatly that they are uninhabitable.

On the surface, it seems that this phenomenon is the result of poor construction quality, plain and simple, but there is more to it. There must be a reason that poor quality is acceptable. Again, we can hide behind the argument that it is a developing country and so the knowledge or ability does not yet exist. After my conversations, this to an extent is certainly true—there is a lack of knowledge about materials, practices, and careful construction that contributes to poor quality. Furthermore, most work is done by unskilled laborers brought in droves to a site, housed there, and forced to work under conditions of withheld pay until a job is done. They have never done construction previously, are poorly trained, and often mess up projects or change designs when parts don’t fit properly. The result is often reconstruction of the poorly done portion, but if more minor means that there are just strange quirks in the project when complete. As for materials, despite the majority of construction occurring in China, I read an article that said based on an inventory, China uses ¼ the number of different materials the US does. That means there is only 25% of the selection, and I have heard that the 75% not present in the market includes most of the “sustainable” products. Even when products are available, like low-VOC paints, contractors typically don’t know of them unless they’ve had occasion to use them previously. They have a set of materials and suppliers (perhaps based on their guanxi, or network/connections) and don’t like to change unless absolutely demanded, and then it costs more.

Yet lack of knowledge is not the root cause of poor quality. Things in China move quickly enough that were there a stronger demand for high-quality, long-lasting space, it would be happening. All developers and contractors would be on board. The problem is that there are economic factors at work against long-lived spaces. The most important of these is that the housing market is so strong that any space will be snatched up before the development is complete. Many middle class and above citizens own two or more properties simply because they see real estate as a wise investment. This means that though some buildings have low occupancy rates, any building can sell its apartments immediately. Without a market that demands high quality and spurns low quality, developers have no incentive to put in the extra money required for long-lasting, high-quality space. The second economic factor is the rate at which property is flipped. Typical building ownership is for a period of 3-5 years in China. That means that the original owner who pays for the development has no incentive to pay for higher-quality features that do not pay back n greater than 5 years. Finally, though not as economically based, land tenure laws have a lot of influence on building longevity. Without owning the land outright, developers are faced with the reality of buying back the land on which their buildings sit in 40-60 years. This disincentivizes building for a design lifetime longer than the duration of the land tenure agreement thereby limiting the range of building lifetimes which is seen. If you are not sure that you will be able to buy the land back (since you don’t know what land prices for that area will look like in the future), then what incentive do you have to put up a great building? And one issue that will have to be decided is whether the price paid for the land under improved properties includes the improvement or not. If it does include improvements (which is looking unlikely, thankfully) then that would further discourage long-term building simply because it would essentially be double jeopardy to buy your expensive sustainable building back in 50 years. The rules have not yet been decided because the land tenure laws have only been in place about 40 years and are just now starting to come due, but it will be something worth paying attention to in the future. When the policies are created, I will be curious to see how it affects the lifetime of developments here.

Well, those are some of my random thoughts and musings from my strolls around Beijing. As you can see, each day is an opportunity, even when I’m out doing something as obviously tourist-oriented as visiting the Great Wall. Never stop thinking, never stop learning, even when out touring and exploring. It’s why I said in my last post that exploring and research were not mutually exclusive. Hopefully as I continue to wander I can expand my views and understandings, and even when I return from the Watson year, this way of learning from everyday encounters will continue.