China is now planning to bulldoze 700 mountains to make more room for cities. What's really shocking is the quote that this is the "largest mountain-moving project in Chinese history." So, this isn't even the first mountain-moving project in China.
It reminded me of the developers in the book Snowcrash who have designed the optimal suburban neighbourhood, and just keep building copies of it all over the world, even if they have to remodel the landscape to make it the same. China seems to have achieved the same combination of boldness in construction and timidity in design.
It's nice to see China building the maglevs and exotic architecture we thought were in our future. But more often they just shovel their money into building facsimiles of western cities. And that's disappointing when you think about the more creative things they could do with their money (even within the context of housing their people and modernizing their infrastructure.) Rather than brute-force work, try cleverer solutions. Instead of moving mountains to make conventional cities, couldn't that money go into adapting structures to the sides of mountains. Or better transportation so the cities can be build on the other side of the mountains. Or for that much money, build the cities inside the mountains.
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