Note: Nick Chu is presently on vacation in China but still managed to smuggle the follow observations out from behind The Great Firewall.
Dong Hai Station in Tianjin's Binhai Mass Transit system - longest "light rail" in China. Notice anything strange? Hint: Platform screen
A quick look at some of the things that make urbanism in China work (or not) – all stats from The Concrete Dragon by Thomas J. Campanella:
Length of Shanghai’s Inner Ring Road in Luwan and Huangpu district: 2 miles
Number of people displaced during its construction: 12,000
Miles of highway constructed by Robert Moses in New York in his career: 415
Miles of highway constructed by Shanghai officials in 10 years during the 199’s: Triple that of Robert Moses
Square miles of Chinese agricultural land lost between 1980-2004: 44,000 – equivalent to the combined land mass of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire and half of Maine.
Number of Chinese lifted out of poverty during the same time period: 300 million
Number of rural migrants making their way to urban centres in 1 year (1998): 27 million – equivalent to the total European migration to the US between 1820 and 1920.
Percentage of world’s footwear produced in Pearl River Delta: ~ 33%
Consumer electronics: ~33%
Toys: ~50%
Watches: ~66%
Percentage of furniture jobs lost in US attributed to the rise of the Dongguan furniture industry in China: ~33%
Number of employees working at Foxconn, manufacturer of Apple products: 200,000
Families relocated/tossed out of Shanghai’s inner district between 1992-1994: 200,000
Residents relocated from Minhang District for World Expo 2010: 50,000
Number of people displaced by urban renewal in Beijing during 1990s: 1 million
Total number of people displaced in 30 years of US urban renewal projects: 1 million
Number of middle class families in China in 2002: 50 million
Estimated number by 2020: 600 million – greater than the total combined populations of the US, Canada and Mexico.