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Comment by marco_salvatori | Hacker News Reader

Little in this article meshes with my experience living in large Chinese cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. Specifically, I have not observed the social problems mentioned "crime, ... social segregation, and destroyed community and neighborhood life". I believe a good description of the average large, Chinese city experience is: lots of cars and people but mixed development with plenty of shops, schools, markets, eating locations, parks, and public transport in easy walking distance. To me, the article comes across as an opinion piece - it was all bigger than the author would have preferred.

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Almost all of the projects built in the last 10-15 years years are self contained walled apartment communities with multiple building surrounding a courtyard/common area.

In Beijing, you just have to get out of the third ring road before these are very common. The first placed I lived in was not like that, it was an older building in a fairly urban area, but after that it was a bunch of complexes (nicer apartments, it was difficult to find something nice outside of a complex), still only a few blocks away from restaurants (or a mall), but all with guarded gates.

It really shows when you want to go somewhere. You can just go from point A to point B, you can’t cut across the huge apartment complex in the middle, you have to instead go around it...that can get really annoying. Likewise, there are only a few roads that let you get between places (eg trying to go from northeast Beijing to sanlitun area, there is only one way across the airport expressway before it ends).

There are more non-walk friendly cities like Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok. KL - everything is walled private property and one can't use shortcuts throughout buildings like I am used in Europe. In Bangkok it's those "sois" which stems from main roads which are not interwoven. To go 100m from soi 48 to soi 49 I have to go back to main road which can be total walking distance of 1-1.5km. PS: I love those cities for everything else.

It’s not just the complexes, every kind of campus in China is gated, like university campuses. It was a bit of a culture shock for me as a western American, but I’ve also seen this happen in east (Harvard) and some old campuses in Europe.

It does make life for pedestrians difficult.

Tourism has taken its toll in European university towns, it would be too disruptive to leave them open. It’s a shame as I would love to attend lectures in Oxford but it’s completely cut off from the public.

These sound like a lot of London's new build complexes. I imaging China's are bigger, but as you say, "self contained walled apartment communities with multiple building surrounding a courtyard/common area".

The closest London has to this is the Barbican from the 60’s, which is still mostly open to the public, or Georgian squares with gardens in the centre closed to the public, which still have road access between the houses and gardens. Large new developments like Nine Elms, Greenwich Peninsula and Elephant and Castle as far as I know always have public thoroughfares. I can’t think of any recent development that could be described as a superblock or a gated community.

London does have a lot more open space which is in fact privately owned, which limits your rights in that space, but that is a separate issue.

"I imaging China's are bigger ... self contained walled apartment communities with multiple building surrounding a courtyard/common area".

"I can’t think of any recent development that could be described as a superblock or a gated community."

Walled and gated are not the same, and smaller than superblock is probably not superblock.

From my very short experience in China (just under 2 months) the cities feel super safe (excluding terrible driving). But this is just an anecdote, naturally.

My Chinese friends generally also feel safer in China than in the Western EU. What I noticed in Chengdu and Shenzhen, literally everyone walks with their nose glued to a smartphone (very frequently iPhone). Apparently robberies are not a common thing.

OTOH I've heard pick-pocketing is quite common in Beijing and Shanghai.

A friend of mine from Allwinner had his apartment burglared (despite living in a walled community,) a coworker had his money stolen out of his bag in a cafe.

Shenzhen was not always that safe. Back 10 years ago, the city had unenviable reputation, but it went from one of most unsafe to one of safest.

That was done at the cost of having a police post every 100 meters (quite literally,) and it is not cheap.

It's a big city so you can always find such rare cases somewhere.

Doesn't tell us much about how safe a particular city is.

Shenzhen was almost nothing 10 years ago and now it has something like the GDP of Hong Kong. It has changed massively in a very short time.

Not 10 years ago. Maybe 30 years ago. There were a number of 40-50 floor skyscrapers being completed in the '90s.

anecdote: my friend in shanghai got robbed of his wallet a month ago

gangs are prevalent just under the radar

I live in Prague and never ever have felt unsafe. One or two times I actually got into a light-ish fistfight, one time after a car crash and the second one was road rage, however I still deem Prague as an exceptionally safe city.

Makes sense, cause it's not Western EU. I also totally feel safe in my home town (Warsaw).

I wasn't aware it's so different that western/central/eastern EU matters.

I think the implication is more Africans/Arabs/refugees in western EU

I agree actually, I live in Shanghai. I'm not sure if it's because I don't really u derstand urban planning but I don't really see what the fuss is over, you can still get around the city by bicycle if you want (and which I often do) and public transport is very convenient

I think it depends where in Shanghai you lived. If you lived in Huangpu, Changing, Xuhui or Jingan districts, bicycle is fine. These are Shanghai's richy-rich areas, once part of the foreign colonial concessions from 19th to mid-20th century. Filled with heritage architecture similar to the Beijing hutongs described in the article above. But once you branch-out to other districts, e.g. Jiading--the industrial district just a few subway stops to the north, it's a different arrangement.

> But once you branch-out to other districts, e.g. Jiading--the industrial district just a few subway stops to the north, it's a different arrangement.

Bicycle is fine is many not that great areas, e.g. Zhabei, Yangpu and most part of Minhang districts. Most areas within the outer ring road are fine for bicycles. Jiading is an extreme example - there are rice paddy fields just 200 meters north of the Jiading North metro station [1].

[1] satellite map here - https://map.baidu.com/@13495931.447421955,3663175.652161875,...

"you can still get around the city by bicycle if you want"

Except:

- bicycles can't cross the river via the tunnels, so you have to wait for a ferry to get to/from puxi/pudong (I remember this adding almost one hour to my journey one night, as the first couple of ferry terminals I visited had closed for the day, and the third had a long wait until the next ferry).

- some of the streets around the major shopping areas prohibit cyclists, even though they are open to cars and pedestrians

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