Quote:
Originally Posted by animatedmartian
Geezus, why do these Chinese towers have such huge sprawling foundations? The only cynical thing I can say about China is that it wouldn't hurt them to build with a conservative amount of materials.
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Yes, that's always bothered me too...but one thing you have to bear in mind, is that these cities ( I can't speak for Tianjin, but I can for Shanghai and Beijing) ARE dense (at least they were originally). That's why all of these new developments and towers aren't; "space" is now a hot commodity here. If you're a developer and you're building an apartment complex (or even a shopping/office development - as they're often one and the same anyways), you'd be wise to incorporate as much open/green space as possible because it's what people want. That's why everything always looks so compound-ish...it's saying, "hey! this is MY green area...I paid for it...keep out!" But it's usually not so bad to be honest. There are plenty of cities, like Nanjing for example, that have no incentive to do it very much because they already have a lot of open green space. At street level, everything is close enough that it doesn't make a huge difference.