Shenzhen: China’s ‘skyscraper capital’ (opens in new tab)

Not just beijing, but other big northern cities as well. Hell even "small" cities. River fronts along songhua on all the cities around there have >>30 story apartment complexes with like 5-20 identical buildings each. One of them uses giant lights to make a sort of pixelated movie screen at night, which only passably works cus the buildings are all the same and run by the same complex.

Very much not just a southern thing.

Honest question, why is that hilarious?

There is a huge amount of cheap, cookie-cutter housing in American suburbia. In fact, I suspect a large majority of single family suburban houses built in the last 50 years are rubber stamp clones from homebuilder planbooks.

See the very old song "Little Boxes" by Malvina Reynolds, also famously covered by folk singer Pete Seeger. I loved it back in 1960, when I was a kid revolted by the sameness of the suburbs.

I don't understand these criticisms. As an American, I think our cities would be vastly improved if we copied this form of housing for lots of people, instead of just low-income housing. (In my city, the low-income-only housing is usually the highest quality housing across the city, and is far nicer than anything a mid-income person is allowed to purchase).

The current alternative that US prefers is far worse, in my opinion -- these micro-unit apod-ment things, with no personal space, no outdoor space, grossly overburdened personal-areas-forced-into-common-areas, and general dorm-room-for-life lifestyle.

I wonder if the apartment-dwellers around central park are similarly despondent about their worst-of-all-worlds habitat.

In China, common spaces are actually utilized.

The network lockin effect is very strong, sadly.

This is why such sites without real alternatives should be controlled by society, and not by companies where two people hold the majority of voting rights.

Those places are different cultures and sifferent social groups.

I can also give the example of Japan and Korea in which Facebook is not very popular.

I was in Shenzhen two weeks ago. You just buy a cheap VPN access like everybody in the tech scene there and you go on with your life. It's not hard to do, even from inside the country.