22 Jun 2011 – Rise of the Asian Megacity

Here is a realistic article about the situation in China today and how they are dealing with the population to cope with the environment  by Thomas J Campanella who also is the author of The Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution and What It Means for the World.

To write about urbanisation in China is to traffic in superlatives… Three decades of sustained economic growth, concentrated along the booming coast, has lured millions from the impoverished Chinese countryside. This great migration – unprecedented in human history – has put 46 Chinese cities over the one million mark since 1992, out of a national total of 102.

And this is just the start...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13799997

Viewing these pix with Shanghai, now has twice as many skyscrapers as New York, China’s domestic automobile market exceeds America’s and Beijing West Railway Station gives the feelings of anxiety, claustrophobic, panic, stress etc! But will this Awakened Dragon show us how to save the world or otherwise?

One of my SIN friends recently commented: exhausted from a 90 min car ride from Marine Pde to SGH for med appt. 3rd world traffic on 1st world highway! Comic relief from anti-speeding (70 kph ahead) signs flashing at cars moving at 10 kph. A journey like this would usually take app 15mins on the highway! Still 90mins is relative in comparison to places like BKK, NRT, HKG etc where one can get stuck in traffic for up to 3hrs!! All photo credits to different sites, except for the house painting below.

Must admit that being in a Minicity like Oslo and in the suburbs is quite relaxing, even when the body and joints ache daily after house painting; better than sitting in traffic-jams! This too shall pass and will keep focusing ahead when I can welcome grandchildren #5 & #6 🙂

My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty.  She’s ninety-seven now, and we don’t know where the hell she is – Ellen DeGeneres