China - sleeping giant awakens

[paul h]

2006-08-03 > Chongqing China Cements Fastest Growing Title

China is famous as a big country with such an insane level of development going on that no-one, probably not even the Chinese government themselves, have any idea of just how much is happening there.
Dubai is better promoted with glitzy gold and palm shaped islands, but China is a world unto itself, something that the plans for an entirely new CBD and airport in Chongqing show. It will take up an entire peninsula off the Jialing River opposite the existing Chongqing CBD literally marching the city en masse across the water into what is entirely undeveloped countryside with an army of dozens of new skyscrapers and a brand new waterfront.
To give an idea of the sheer scale of the development, the competition for the airport has been narrowed down to 16 entries with the preferred one by the developer the Chongqing Airport Group, they have designed it to handle 60-75 million passengers a year, something that can rival Heathrow in London.
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Chongqing is already a burgeoning centre with two super-tall towers under construction but this new proposal alone will give it more proposed skyscrapers than the whole of Western Europe.

The current skyscrapers being built are the 398m Chuanjiang Fanying and the 377m 72 floor Wanhao Financial Center that is being built for JW Marriott (pictured right). That's without mentioning the dozens of smaller skyscrapers of a mere 150 metres plus, so many that even the models of the proposals for the city make them uncountable.
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Only last year the Chongqing World Trade Center at 283 metres was also completed, and other huge towers such as the JiaLingFanYing and Crest of the City, both rumoured to be over 400 metres high, are planned but all of these are planned for the current centre of the city rather than new developments.
In the last ten years has reportedly built over 200 according to official Chinese news agency sources and is labelled the fastest growing urban centre on the planet by the record books. Population counts are sketchy and vary between 6.3 and 12 million depending on who you listen to whilst growth is running at 800,000 new inhabitants a year.

This growth can be supported by the most populous country in the world, the Chinese government has decreed that Chongqing be a "gateway to the west" and with its central location between two rivers, not to mention the Three Gorges damn to provide power plus a fifth of all of China's natural gas supply, it is has the deck already stacked in it's favour.

Few people may have heard of it today outside of China but in as few as ten years Chongqing could be as well known as Hong Kong or Shanghai. It certainly has ambitions to match and as 8.5 million Chinese peasants flood into their country's urban areas every year, becoming a megatropolis of 20 million should be no problem.

copyright skyscrapernews.com

[malec]

I've seen some excellent models showing what's planned for Chongqing, apparantly it's the fastest growing city in the world (more than Shanghai). I'll try to find some pictures. Amazing the scale of development going on there.

People often look at Dubai's megaprojects as the largest scale developments in the world but in China huge developments that are the same size or even bigger than Dubai's go virtually unheard of.

[malec]

OK, I just yoinked these from skyscrapercity.com which I am a member of.













Apparantly there are well more than 10 towers over 1000ft planned, at least that's according to someone over on that website, also that looks pretty evident from these models if they show the real plans for the city

[ciai]

http://www.archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=5202

[yubq]

sure,China is holding more and more "skyscrapers pageants".but so far economic gain does not mean she has "earned" the ability to host them, for the gain is simply superficial.some local govt are often criticized for the mania of luxury office buildings. and the central govn has become aware of this problem and discourages them.China is still a developing country, far from a developed one.