samo pedersen
A quick look at the Chinese property market: first in the money chain is to develop a master plan that looks interesting enough to persuade investors to buy units in order to speculate in rising apartment prices. If the master plan has enough metaphors and can convince buyers that this new development is the key to future prosperity, units are sold and the developer is home-free. Next in the chain is when the building is built and the units are resold to new owners as more people are convinced as the development is realised. Third owners actually have a key in their hand, but most likely they bought it for speculation with the expectation of further price jumps. As the units are re-resold it is the first time that the need to actually have a door and some windows in each unit comes into play. By time people move in money has shifted hands so often that the developer’s interest in building something of good quality is very low. The present situation where it is more likely that people buy apartments for speculation instead of actually living in them compromises the actual value. If it is presumed that increasing migration makes people believe in the temporality of their need, then this makes a perfect setting for continuous development of very low quality residential apartments; an easy way to feed greedy developers and for that sake us architects.
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