08/04/2025
Notes from China:
Flying into Langzhou, Gansu Province, 2 elements stood out.
1. Infrastructure being built for the new elevated high speed rail system: a widely repeated , narrow, elegant bridge system that snakes through the landscapes , allowing the landscape and drainage surface to remain minimally affected compared to a surface-built system. New construction of this system is everywhere we visited despite apparent already completed bullet train connections between so many cities that just 15 years ago were remote and hard to reach with slow bus transportation along small rural highways.
2. Secondly , the approximately 25 story apartment buildings — built in groups of 10, 20, or 50 — lining the outskirts of major cities , smaller cities, suburban communities, and even villages. My previous prejudice that these structures seem dystopian, out of scale, and impersonal gave way to an admiration for their lighter touch on the landscape, compared to , for example , the US’s development model of low density sprawling communities connected by massive wide strands of highways.
An aecdotal assessment: a sensible way to handle housing for large populations, with connections to street life and amenities within a relatively modest footprint. The strategy of using a widely repeated design : approximately 25-story narrow towers with apparently ample space and light between them with relatively fewer highways and feeder roads, must make for a far smaller environmental footprint than our US development model.
