Village skyscraper exposes extortionate costs of regular housing

• Source: Global Times
• [23:29 July 29 2010]
• Comments

Is there a trade-off between cost and quality as usual? Hu's words are counterintuitive yet frank: "Quality was my No.1 concern. Unlike government-backed developments, the liability here falls entirely on my shoulders, since I didn't get approval from the Bureau of Urban Planning.

While problems with other developments, if there are any, are easily cleaned up by the government, I stand on my own."

Although it will take time to assess whether this no-government approval, low-cost building excels in quality its government-backed, highly-priced counterparts, Chinese building standards are hardly great, as shown by the many recent cases of buildings that started to lean soon after construction. Thanks to the mass media, examples of this have been exposed everywhere from Shanghai to Qinghai.

The 13-story, thankfully unfinished residential building that fell sideways in Shanghai in June 2009, killing a worker, is a particularly bad example.

So is one compound in Nanjing, where the real estate developer was rewarded with an "Excellent Dwelling Development" certificate at the same time as the buildings it had put up leant and cracked.

Wherever they were, all of these poorly constructed buildings had all the certificates and approvals possible. It's ludicrous that those buildings sold at extraordinarily high prices are so fragile.

A building without government approval, however, is not worry-free either.

In addition to quality issues, it may be torn down just like everything else when the city finally rolls over it. Since when did finding somewhere to live in China become such a hassle?

The author is a PhD candidate of Political Science at the University of Delaware. viewpoint@ globaltimes.com.cn