Is this really living?

Discussion in 'Off The Beaten Track' started by immoimeme, Apr 30, 2010.

  1. iloveemoticons

    iloveemoticons Well-Known Member

    Yeah. There might be a bit of a bubble right now, but I would imagine that in the long run, housing prices in Beijing, Shanghai, and other urban centers are going to keep rising into the foreseeable future. This is a massive country whose economy had been repressed by communism and only in the past two decades really seen expansion. Beijing is going from the drabness of communism to a world class metropolis, and prices are rising commensurately.
  2. cruisin

    cruisin Well-Known Member

    Angelskates might have a better perspective on this than I do. But, I imagine that part of the housing expense is due to there being no real suburban housing. I recall that there is a great deal of empty space around Beijing, but everyone is crowded into living in the city. Possibly because there is no public transportation to get people from more remote areas. Or, because there are no/limited utilities extended to more remote areas. Though that may have changed since I was there. If that is still the case, we may see a large effort to get housing on the perimeters of the city, people spreading out to get nicer accommodations.

    China/Beijing is not the only place where I've noticed that phenomenon. There are areas in the US, where I have noticed that housing within the city is very expensive, but little has been done to develop more affordable housing in the areas around the city. I noticed in parts of Texas, which has vast expanses of undeveloped land, that the suburban properties are very small. That quite large houses are built practically on top of each other and those developed areas are surrounded by acres/miles of nothing.
  3. KCC

    KCC Active Member

    Do people living in these apartments have any "stuff"? I did not see space for a few changes of clothes (including a coat and umbrella), a mirror/comb/toothbrush/towel, some food and a plate, etc. I'd give up the television for a few more changes of socks & underwear, a book or two and a reading light. I'm another person who prefers privacy over larger shared spaces, but this is about half the size for me to be comfortable for more than one night.
  4. timing

    timing fragrance free

    I think things are stored under the bed where the blue bucket is and in bags hanging above the bed. I was wondering if the blue bucket was a trash container with a lid to keep the smell down.
  5. BigB08822

    BigB08822 Well-Known Member

    I think there are a few reasons for this.

    1. Most people do not go out and buy their own plot of lands miles from everyone else. They look for an already built home in an established neighborhood. Most people do not want to be completely alone, just outside of the city (and I mean just, not miles and miles away) and out of the super small and expensive apartments.

    2. Builders snatch up areas of land and want to make as much profit off of it as they can. So they put as many houses as they can in this space.

    I think the examples of places in the US are different than in Beijing.
  6. Anita18

    Anita18 Well-Known Member

    I'd think that many people who are buying houses have kids, and thus would want a place with an established school system and a big-box store. You aren't going to get that in the middle of nowhere, and it would take some risks for a middle-of-nowhere place to be developed.

    Where my parents live, a new state university recently came up. It's growing, but it's slow. The developers bet wrong because they spent untold amounts of money building giant McMansions with giant lawns that nobody could afford aside from I guess some of the professors. The real estate bubble burst very badly (it's the worst county hit in the state) and there are now neighborhoods full of unfinished houses there. There was no market for such houses, but they built anyway.

    Here in LA many people live miles and miles from their workplace just so they can be in the suburbs with a house with a lawn. But it's definitely not in the middle of nowhere.
  7. cruisin

    cruisin Well-Known Member

    Absolutely, the US examples are very different from Beijing. I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I was saying they were the same. Sometimes my train of thought takes off and I don't transition properly :D.

    Anyway, with regard to the Texas example, it's not so much that I am suggesting building in the middle of nowhere. It's more that, there is so much space to spread out, and the homes are on such tiny lots. I guess it strikes me as being odd because living in the NE, there is not much land left to develop, and yet most suburban properties are much larger. Even with much smaller homes on them. You rarely see communities where all of the houses are divided by walls, in the NE.