If Chinese Urban Housing Looks Like This ... Never Mind! Boston Condos For Sale Ford Realty

I found this story, online. The author paints a pretty picture of urban living, in China.

I’m skeptical that things are quite so fantastic, there, plus I’m not sure that the US shares anything in common with China, that would allow us to build anything such as what he is proposing.

In China, single-family homes are rare, and the vast majority of people live in what Americans would charitably call high-rise apartment blocks or, put less delicately, projects. As dismal as these may sound (and as dismal as they sometimes appear), the neighborhoods that form around these Chinese projects really work. They’re far from tidy and seldom beautiful, but on the whole they’re livelier, safer and more inviting at all hours of the day than any American equivalent. They are as successful as most American housing projects have been catastrophic.

It’s not clear whether the author of this article is writing about “projects” in the sense of “building developments”, or whether he is writing about “projects” in the sense of “public housing developments”.

Regardless, I don’t think we go running off to Shanghai with sketchbooks, in order to design better housing, here in America.

Reading his story, it made me think of the Mass Pike Towers, which were built in Chinatown, in 1970. I wonder whether these five buildings were built to mimic the type of housing that apparently is prevalent in Chinese cities.