Thursday, July 28, 2016

Maybe we should learn from China's mistakes, if not our own


From Forbes:

As the storm sewers of many of China’s cities have been pushed beyond their capacity, spewing deluges of water into the streets, many are blaming the disaster on the country’s breakneck pace of urbanization.

China has built cities faster and more extensively than any other civilization in history. In hardly 35 years, the country built over 450 new cities, urbanized 40,000 square kilometers of countryside, threw up hundreds of millions of homes, constructed a 19,000 kilometer high-speed rail network, dug 26 new subway systems, paved more than 60,000 kilometers of highways, and erected nearly a hundred new airports.

This urbanization push was backed by economic and political incentives. At the peak of China’s new city building boom urbanization was responsible for 16 to 25% of total GDP, 33% of fixed asset investment, 10% of urban employment, 15% of bank loans, and fueled 40 industries. Stimulating the local economy and complying with national urbanization goals were also core KPI criteria for the promotion of officials within the government. So China built and built, and are only now starting to realize the full impact of what they’ve created.

In this explosion of development, natural water management systems — rivers and streams, ponds and lakes, as well as the soil — have been asphyxiated with endless expanses of pavement and concrete. In Wuhan, a city that has been leveled by this year’s flooding, saw 87 lakes, two-thirds of its total, filled in or otherwise destroyed between 1949 and 2015. According to Kongjian Yu, the dean of Peking University’s College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, heavily urbanized eastern China lost upwards of 50% of its wetlands in the past thirty years, which drastically reduces flood retention capacities.

These impermeable urban surfaces which have been replacing natural features in China’s cities at an astonishing rate prevent rainwater from finding its way into the ground below, funneling it instead into a Soviet-style system of pipes and drains, which are becoming more and more overtaxed and inadequate.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Another reason why millions of Chinese are leaving their country...and landing in the US.

Anonymous said...

Well if all of China would stop moving here, we wouldn't have to keep putting up new buildings for people to live in. China is sending us their problem...human population.

Anonymous said...

Overpopulation, unchecked urban sprawl, lack of urban planning and greedy developers. I'm talking about NYC, not China. When will people wake up and realize"you can't fool Mother Nature"? All it takes is a good storm for things to go to shit. Our leadership will blame global warming and changing weather patterns when the real culprit is a total lack of responsible urban planning.

Anonymous said...

The "flood" that WE are experiencing here, unfortunately with no drainage holes available, is every frickin' Chinese gutter rat that can get themselves over here. First they took over upper Main Street's part of Flushing, then Bayside, and now Forest Hills and Kew Gardens Hills. Every other face I see on the street is Chinese. I feel like I live in Hong Kong. They are turning our once gorgeous neighborhood into a replica of a Chinese slum. Why, EVERYONE hangs laundered rugs out on bushes to dry them, right? EVERYONE uses window wells of buildings to store their stash of stolen redeemable bottles grabbed out of everyone's recycle bin, right? And scatters trash all over the lawn while doing it. And EVERYONE remodels their 1-bedroom apartment between the hours of 2 and 3 a.m. with loud banging and sawing, the better to turn it into an illegal boarding house, right? Chinese trash.

Anonymous said...

The real trash is our local elected officials who let this shit happen to us in America !

Anonymous said...

"what difference does it make"?Flushing,Main Street sidewalks will be extended 4'on both sides to accommodate overpopulation.While Cong.Meng & dem.prog.will not temporarily stop CD 6 Visa Waiver progs. & remove/deport Visa waiver overstays from the S.E.Asia area.DHS/CIS estimate 10,000.have overstayed in 2015.

Anonymous said...

did you know china refuses to accept their citizens who have committed felonies in the U.S.A.?

Anonymous said...

RU kidding?
China, like Castro's Cuba, allows its crooks to emmigrate here. Clean the jails. Send them to America.
They quickly joined with crooked politicians like Gary Ackerman and now the daughter of a convicted felon, Congesswoman Grace Meng.
Yes her dad carried 80 grand , hidden in a gift fruit basket, to try and bribe a judge.
Nice pedigree, Grace.

Anonymous said...

You've got the water. Add some dumplings, stir fry the injured and dead, and you've got some egg drop wonton soup.
Life is cheap in China. It is of no consequence for its leaders to lose half of their population to disaster, war or flooding.
China will overpopulate the world, eventually. As Mao said they will win without ever firing a shot.
Maybe Flushing can get Trump to build that Great Wall to stop the flooding of illegal felonious Chinese into the area.
How about that, Donald? You are a Queens boy.

Anonymous said...

So shall ye overbuild. So shall ye reap!
Take a lesson , Flooshing! Kick out Peter Koo, Chuck Apelian, Grace Meng, Toby Stavisky, et al!

Anonymous said...

BINGO!
You are looking at Flushing's future.
Maybe not so far in the future.
Unchecked immigration. Unchecked mega building. Unchecked massive political corruption!
Name your poison!
The #7 is already overstuffed. The town is bloated with humanity which is grossly underserved.
But fat cat pols, like Moby Stavisky , are being extremely well served.
Hell, do you think that Peter Koo lives in his filthy overpopulated district?
No. He maintains a front but lives in Port Washington.
Good for you, Koo! Slurp the gravy while your countrymen live off of crappy remains of your meal.
Burp! Hope you are enjoying reading this, you smiling SOB!

Anonymous said...

1 child per couple...and that goes for Corona and Elmhurst...we don't need any more children!

georgetheatheist said...

All it takes is a good storm for things to go to shit.

The L train in Brooklyn.

Anonymous said...

> EVERYONE uses window wells of buildings to store their stash of stolen redeemable bottles grabbed out of everyone's recycle bin, right?

If it's in the trash, it's garbage, not owned any more.

Anonymous said...

Technically NOT TRUE,
Once garbage is placed at the curb it is the LEGAL property of the Department of Sanitation.
In other words NYC.
There have been instances where scavengers have been fined for rummaging through what we call garbage.

Anonymous said...

Vote for Trump. LOL. He will put a stop to this by putting up a wall! haahaha. But you think Clinton will stop this? I don't think so. Her Husband is actually the one started the housing crisis when in 1999, Congress passed and Bill Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, overturning Glass-Steagall. I saw that 10 miles away when Clinton did that.. removing the Glass_Steagall act basically allowed wall street and investment bank interwine with commerical bank to allow them to use your money to create CDOs and derivatives and thus allowing even cash earning strippers to many houses in vegas and mortgage brokers to just lend without knowing how to read income returns.

Also I don't think democrats will put restrictions on immigrants coming in or laundering money in. I'm not left-winged or right-winged. I'm just seeing the things as they are as I never to take sides in politics. Right now China's limiting only 10k per account per year to be wired in from China as oppose to 50k. This will take a longer time for any non-westernized chinese to get a substantial down payment, and thus you see a bit of slow down in Queens Real Estate, else every house will be 2 million instead of 1 million. They still allow stated income loans and thus that's what is uphelding the market and making it rise slowly. Remove that, you will have a slight drop as many are making only 25k on paper but has like a million bucks in cash somewhere.

Then USA will have to make it harder by wanting to see where the money is coming from.. not just 2 months of sitting in the bank. But traces it. So you want a slow down in real estate, it's the federal government officials who will have to think hard about it because the Chinese are cunning when it comes to making money and trying to find loopholes in the laws. btw, I'm talking about residential Real estate here where it's no more than 2 or 3 family. But it will probably take like a few years for govt to really realized what happens and enacted on it.