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Comment by ecaron | Hacker News Reader

It is hard to read this story without thinking about the massive scale of "we just built this building, but we're going to tear it down because it is a deathtrap" demolitions that are happening in Beijing and the other populous cities in China that are still growing at obscene rates: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/china-proudly-demolishing-b...

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Of course the classic example of 'build a big building to look good, but so poorly that it will never really be usable' is the North Korean Ryugong Hotel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryugyong_Hotel

We are in another age now though. I'm not sure anyone will quite reach the same levels of stupidity.

That building is totally bizarre.

it looks like the space battleship from Galaga.

They're actually finishing it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryugyong_Hotel#Construction_re...

There aren't any pictures of the insides however so this might be a classic case of North Korea "Look What It Looks Like On The Outside" that we're supposed to believe.

There are lots of videos about China's ghost cities, like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbDeS_mXMnM

Lots... yet everyone quotes that same australian one. That misrepresents a suburb as a 'city'.

How many places in the world have vacant property developments? Do you call them 'ghost cities'?

There is a lot of sensationalism in that article. Half the pictured buildings are over ten years old. Only one is less than three years old.

That is not to deny that china has an over investment issue with their state financed industries. But still, in a country of over a billion I do not think it is out of the ordinary to have some development.

They also have the benefit of the rest of the developed world's experience of how to plan cities.

Do they really only plan to use these large buildings for only 10 years and then rebuild? Is this normal for the rest of the world?

It's not particularly abnormal during rapid real-estate development cycles. The scale is unusual, but then again, China is the first country with more than a billion people.

No it isn't, India does as well.

first, not only.

I'd understand if they were demolishing decrepit buildings and building new and better buildings. That doesn't seem the case.

It's plausible that none of what we have learnt so far applies very well to extremely large populations. I still find it strange and super inefficient.

When it comes to efficiency in the real-estate market, efficiency is based on the highest and best use of the particular location. Ownership patterns and the regulatory processes for entitlement are the significant impediments to redevelopment of prime locations. These are less of an issue in China.

To some extent, the web is a useful analogy, we don't blink when a web property is redeveloped - a ten year old website is virtually untenable for commercial ventures. Real-estate is subject to similar forces to those which motivate Google to rewrite their search page.

No tall building (above 3 floors wood frame) would get anywhere close to economic viability if the plan was to only leave it up for 10 years. Think about how many buildings that are within 20 years old that have been demolished in the united states. The number would be insanely low.

Insanely low, but not nonexistent. In a country with a fraction of the population of China.

Say you'd built a skyscraper, and a few years afterwards someone offered you enough money to make out with a hefty profit because real estate is booming and you're occupying a prime location. Would you sell?

Prior to my current role I worked in institutional multifamily brokerage. One of the assets I was selling was 50 years (mid rise) and it still wasn't worth bulldozing since it is less expensive to renovate and rent is highly coorelated to price/sf.

There are no examples of what you are talking about that I can think of. There are cases where short mid-rises are bulldozed for ultra high density, but the math makes it very rare circumstances and none that I know of would be 10 or 20 year old buildings. We are talking 50 year+ buildings.

I do not disagree with that claim, but I also think the economics would change a bit if you could destroy them in a month and build a new one in a week.

China has many large buildings. Of this very large set a few turned out to need demolition.

The article accuses China of paying the morning crew to dig a ditch and the evening crew to fill it up. I dislike communist in-efficiencies just as much as any other capitalist, but I do not think the situation is occurring quite to the severity implied in the parent's article.

Meetoo. Moreover, it is deep in Asian culture to have to rebuild frequently their architecture. I have lived beside the Forbidden City and it is in continuous reworking. I bet not one part of it is older than a couple of decades. But its plan odds very old, predates the foundation of Beijing itself. So having to destroy and rebuild every now and then is quite normal here.

Interested readers might want to check what Simon Leys said on the matter.

I read a book on the history of Burma. It was very common to move the capital, due to the humidity, wood gets old. The emporer's court would rather not have to deal with reconstruction so the solution: start a new palace in a new location, when ready move the population of the city. And they were doing this for hundreds of years.

Cue the clip from LA Story of Steve Martin proudly proclaiming "Some of these buildings are almost twenty-five years old!"

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