CHINA BUILDS.
WHILE WE CONSULT 💎
I watched this video this afternoon:
What China Is Building Today Is Almost Impossible to Believe.
https://youtu.be/5qUfZ2FRQtk?si=D3lqpaV0-x1f2G5b
The title is breathless, I know, but the underlying story is worth discussing.
China is not just building bridges, railways, power lines, cities and tunnels.
It has built an enormous capacity to build.
Construction equipment is being produced in highly automated factories. New cities are being designed with utilities underground from the start. Vast power transmission systems move electricity thousands of kilometres. Water is diverted across entire regions. Rail, roads, logistics, energy and manufacturing are being developed together rather than as isolated projects.
It is staggering.
In Xiongan, for example, infrastructure that older cities struggle to retrofit is being designed in from the start. China has also built thousands of kilometres of underground utility corridors so power, water and communications can be maintained without repeatedly digging up streets.
Now, I am not suggesting that everything China builds is wise.
Some projects carry serious environmental, political and strategic costs. Speed and scale do not automatically equal good government.
But I keep coming back to something else.
WHEN DID SO MANY OF US LOSE THE ABILITY TO BUILD BIG THINGS?
We seem increasingly good at discussing, regulating, consulting, reviewing, financing, objecting and delaying.
China still seems capable of deciding that something enormous should exist...
And then it makes it exist.
I don’t think the answer is to copy China.
But it does mean asking an uncomfortable question about ourselves.
How did wealthy, technologically advanced societies become so hesitant about building the physical future?
Housing, rail, energy, water, public transport, infrastructure.
None of these things is mysterious.
They require planning, money, engineering, political commitment and the willingness to keep going for longer than one election cycle.
China’s great advantage may not simply be that it builds faster.
It may be that it still thinks of infrastructure as a system, rather than a collection of individual problems dealt with one at a time.
We do not need less democracy.
But perhaps we do need to remember that democracy is also supposed to be capable of doing things.
@3goodthings @DigitalCoup @meditation @economics_that_works
#China #Infrastructure #Cities #PublicTransport #Engineering #Future #democracy #infrastructure #energy #future