SANTOSH 9702: cities

Showing posts with label cities. Show all posts

Saturday, July 18, 2026

How do you personally perceive Chinese cities compared to Western cities?

Some western cities are truly impressive, for example Vancouver:

Let's take a closer look at them:

If you come from a typical developing country, Western cities will seem very impressive. The infrastructure and buildings are far superior to those in any developing country, with a few exceptions. Now, Vancouver has a population of 2.4 million people – whereas there are 64 Chinese cities with more than 1 million inhabitants, which puts things into perspective.

For this reason, the Chinese are often not very impressed by major Western cities, and there are only a few that can truly compete and wouldn't be described as "small" or something similar. New York is a prime example:

That's impressive even by Chinese standards.

I come from a developing country and when I first saw Western cities I was quite impressed, until I saw Chinese ones.

Here is the built-up area of Shanghai, and it is truly enormous:

It just keeps going and going; more than 20 million people live in New York and Shanghai.

Shanghai and the majority of Chinese cities have a high population density due to land scarcity.

Many will now think that Shanghai and Beijing are the only cities that look like this. But many "smaller" Chinese cities are also densely built and have modern infrastructure:

Tuesday, July 14, 2026

What are the most fascinating abandoned cities?

In Burj Al Babas, Türkiye, there are houses shaped like little castles:

They are completely empty.

It was supposed to be a luxury community. The project was put on hold during Turkey's economic crisis. Only 587 of the 732 structures were completed. They would have cost around half a million dollars to purchase.

The holding company filed for bankruptcy protection, leaving a ghost town.

Thus the villas were never completed as not enough buyers could be found.

The timing was simply bad, given that the country had excessive inflation and other problems. So for now, they remain intact.

The problem with houses like these is that if you have $400,000, you usually don't want to buy a house that's exactly the same as every other house in the neighborhood.

You would like to try to be unique at that point.

At least, they're certainly fun to watch.

Tuesday, April 14, 2026

How have cities used technology to deal with extreme climates?

Iceland has tons of volcanic activities and geothermal fields available around it. This activity brings unending hot steaming water.

This is a tremendous source of natural energy.

Among powering many things they do in everyday life, this energy becomes useful in combatting the freezing climate, and more specifically, sidewalks.

When you live in cold climates, maintaining sidewalks becomes a back-breaking pain in the ass. People have to constantly maintain them, or risk injury to themselves or others. And it is also highly inefficient and ineffective.

Engineers in Iceland have managed to drill down beneath the surface, accessing massive, self-replenishing bodies of hot water. They then built pipes to their local plants, running the hot water directly to them. The pipes were specially designed to preserve heat, most water losing less than 2 degrees celcius on its voyage.

And then, those energy plants generated easy electricity with that water and feed it into special wires that were laid down into their sidewalks, making them warmer, unfreezing the ice, and making their cities walkable.

The energy is self-sustaining; it doesn’t require many people. And it is natural. Volcanic, hot water powers much of an Icelander's everyday life.

Iceland sets a great example in responsible use of its natural resources.