China's Skyscraper Boom is Officially Over

[Music] this is haiku the capital of china's hernan province [Music] it's home to more than 2 million people but not even in the country's top 50 by population and yet despite being a small city by china's standards it's still full of tall buildings including skyscrapers all of which have been built since 2000 but that's all about to change the recent ban on the construction of supertall buildings across china has been significantly expanded and now even smaller skyscrapers in places like this will be forbidden oh and there's been a tightening of restrictions in china's bigger cities too so what's caused the nation with more skyscrapers than anyone else to make such a dramatic u-turn [Music] you might remember our video from july 2020 responding to a pretty extraordinary bit of news coming out of china the country's ministry of housing and urban rural development had just banned the construction of buildings over 500 metres in height and placed heavy restrictions on those planning to go over 250 metres entire cities designed to look like paris venice london even jackson hole wyoming it also put a stop to the copycat architecture craze which saw large and slightly weird replicas of landmarks from around the world pop up in several cities the eiffel tower look at that place despite some analysts predicting its skyscraper obsession would calm down at some point the fact that china would contribute no further to the list of the world's tallest buildings which it dominates came as a shock to many and yet it's another government announcement made in october 2021 where things get really interesting because now cities with populations under 3 million won't be able to build skyscrapers at all going taller than 150 meters the height at which a building officially becomes a skyscraper will no longer be allowed if that wasn't all larger cities will be limited to 250 metres less than half the height of china's tallest buildings [Music] now special exemptions may still be given if a small city really needs a new skyscraper but they absolutely definitely cannot go above 250 meters likewise a bigger city could go higher than that if it has a convincing case but if it wants to go over 500 meters then forget it no more shanghai towers or ping and finance centers and that's final there are even new rules to follow past the 100 meter mark to go higher than that a building will need to meet certain seismic and fire safety requirements the question then is why wasn't china getting by just fine before didn't its skyrish cropper boom help it achieve those remarkable rates of development that it's enjoyed since the 1980s [Music] well not everyone was that stunned by these new measures in fact some experts kinda saw it coming i'm not surprised at all that this new rules came in because in the past few years chinese government clearly start to pay more attention to the building quality and also the characteristics of chinese cities dr fei chen is a senior lecturer at the university of liverpool's school of architecture in the uk she specializes in urban design and public space in the past more than three decades as you know the urbanization speed in china was astonishing and really rapid and in that process a lot of buildings were built by speed really so not in a high quality and high standard so chinese governments have noticed this this problem [Music] those concerns about quality have only grown not helped by incidents like this in may 2021 where footage of a skyscraper in shenzhen shaking uncontrollably went viral officials are also keen to prevent more so-called vanity projects where buildings are constructed more to make a statement than meet an actual need those buildings occasionally result in more floor space than could ever realistically be filled and designs that arguably give little consideration to the surrounding area there's the really extreme cases too some cities are now stuck with half-built skyscrapers caused by major financial problems during their construction like golden finance 117 a story we've told before on this channel then there are the environmental reasons like the high wind pressures and urban heat island effect that many skyscrapers create around them as well as the added strain they can place in our city's transport system another concern is also a social concern as well because all those buildings mostly are out of context because chinese cities still had a long history of development and most of them still have a lot of historical buildings in it and most of them are low rise focusing more on small cities which haven't been through the same massive development yet ensures they don't also become packed with tall buildings which simply aren't needed but while the new rules make it clear what you mustn't do there's not a lot of detail on what you should do instead dr shen believes this is because chinese cities differ greatly between regions which would make it difficult to take a one-size-fits-all approach the thing about china is that it's a big country and the development level are so different from city to city and their historical remains are so different from city to city so it's really hard in a central government issue document to see what you should do instead local authorities planners and architects are encouraged to decide that for themselves ensuring that what they come up with works within the current setting rather than going for extreme heights wacky designs or both [Music] it all seems to make sense but why is this happening now and does the timing have anything to do with another situation in china that caught the world's attention in 2021 it's called fairyland but it feels like a ghost town it's more than 300 billion dollars in debt and has defaulted on two overseas bonds we're talking of course about the ongoing real estate crisis which has seen developers like evergrand one of the biggest in china struggle to pay off massive debts sell their housing stock and access new financing this has a lot to do with the economic changes in this current situation in the past few years they started to encourage the circular economy within the country because they don't say the high international trading is a sustainable way in the future there's a lot of ghost towns they build residential buildings but nobody buying it in some especially in the in the inland cities the new rules can't change what's already happened but they could help prevent further struggles like this from happening again in the future although it's a complex issue that hype restrictions alone can't solve overall the response has been mostly favorable the fact we'll never see another chinese mega tool might make some a bit sad but it's probably the right decision going forward smaller cities will need to find other ways to put themselves on the map china's insatiable growth is seemingly now maturing into a new phase one where the architectural and economic integrity of its cities matters more than ever before if you enjoyed this video and you want to get more from the definitive video channel for construction make sure you subscribe to the b1m you

Channel: The B1M

Views: 880,950

Keywords: B1M, TheB1M, Construction, architecture, engineering, The B1M, Fred Mills, building, china, skyscrapers, china skyscraper ban, shanghai, shanghai tower, guangzhou, beijing, haikou, dr fei chen, university of liverpool, evergrande, china real estate crisis, real estate crisis, real estate, architects, ping an finance center, goldin finance 117, abandoned skyscrapers, unfinished skyscrapers, world's tallest buildings, tallest buildings, chinese government, ccp, chinese communist party

Id: PilJj0TR_xk

Length: 7min 58sec (478 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 12 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Pale_Fire21]

TL;DW - The government HEAVILY tightened restrictions on all new buildings, flat out banning 500m+ builds and putting new restrictions on 250m and 150m builds as well as clamping down on vanity projects created by billionaires and giant corporations that waste resources over-building so they can say they're the tallest for the sake of being the tallest without ever actually filling the building

If you legitimately need a skyscraper for housing or business you can still build one it just can't surpass 500m and if it's past 250m you need a legitimate reason.

[u/WritewayHome]

The government line: No more tall skyscrapers because we want better quality.

The real reason: Building in China is less than a safe endeavor in the best of circumstances; material is not tested properly, and a lot of corners are cut in production. Steel metal can bend like a twig because it's not proper steel, just crude iron. Read below

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/4b5jir/people\_say\_chinese\_steel\_is\_poor\_quality\_what/

Continuing to build these scrapers would have meant potential collapses and serious risk of major death and reputational loss globally.

​

So it is quality, but specifically, the whole space needs regulation and control to ensure proper safety is met. Until this is done, it's risky to build any higher than 200 meters.

[u/13u11d3r]

Good

[u/so555]

Ponzi schemes got to end sometime