Image source: Co.Exist
People might be getting tired of talking about the urban growth that's been occurring in China over the past two decades. But I’m not. Because it’s absolutely astonishing... So I’m going to tell you a little more about its growth upwards, as in physically upwards.
The rate of urbanization has continued to increase substantially across the globe, with the number of people living in cities now far beyond the number of those living outside of cities. With pressures to minimize sprawl and capitalize on valuable inner city areas, the trend to build upwards has also continued. This trend has been particularly prominent in China. In 1980 Shanghai didn’t have one skyscraper. Today, it has over 4000. Yep, 4000… That’s double the number of skyscrapers in New York.
Image source: Co.Exist
Researchers at the University of New Hampshire, Yale and Boston University used data from NASA’s QuikSCAT satellite analyse the spread of city lights and plot the growth trajectory of cities around the world. The results indicate how insane China’s urban growth up and out has been over the past few years. These graphs show growth over time; the arrows stretch from 1999 at the tails to 2009 at the heads. The longer the arrows stretch horizontally indicates how much the city that has expanded outwards, while the vertical extent indicates its growth upwards by building more skyscrapers.
While cities such as New York and London have expanded considerably, China’s growth is on another scale altogether. To what extent will this trend continue? I for one am pretty damn excited to see how the booming nation is redefining the concept of the city.
Check This is Shanghai below – an awesome film that gives us a sweeping view of this truly fascinating place.
