Word: shanghais
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...richest men in China. He founded his company, now a huge conglomerate, in the early 1990s, with three friends from Shanghai's Fudan University. Today, like so many successful Chinese businessmen of his generation, he seems preternaturally calm when talking about why he believes the future is going to look a lot like the present: new houses go up, new houses get bought, more new houses...
...everyone who moves here will still own a car, because this is a suburb, right? When we lived in Shanghai, my wife walked out of our apartment to a street market a few blocks away to buy vegetables every day. Here, you drive to the store. In China, the car, almost as much as the new apartment or house, is a badge of honor among the newly minted middle class. If the neighbors I've met are any indication, many people will still drive into town rather than commute on a crowded train. This, despite the fact that it costs...
...Ironically, all of these new suburbs in Shanghai, mine included, bill themselves as environmentally friendly. And relatively speaking, they are. There is green space here - large grassy parks and small lawns, which don't exist in the city. But things have hardly started yet. I recently asked a retired Shanghai city planner how much thought had gone into the environmental consequences of the Short March. He sighed. "We know people will probably have to drive more. There will be more cars on the streets everywhere. But there are other important factors to consider." Such as? He paused, and just rotated...
...Zhong Driving School, who creep slowly down the town's wide, untrafficked thoroughfares. But life won't feel lonely for long. There are 200,000 houses and apartments either under construction or planned for this city. Multiply that by 10 - the number of satellite cities going up around Shanghai alone - and you get a sense of the economic forces at work. To the developers who conjured this place out of nothing, the payoff is as close to a matter of fact as any investment can be. Listen to Guo Guangchang, the co-founder and CEO of Fosun Group - whose subsidiary...
...office on Shanghai's famous Bund, and I half-jokingly told him I was a little nervous about my investment. Analysts' reports these days are full of tales about China's real estate bubble. Was it possible that the skeptics might be right - that Shanghai itself is already overbuilt, and the suburbs Guo is helping create are a bridge way too far? He looked at me as if I were from another planet, then smiled politely. "There is only one Shanghai in China," he said. "People want to come here from all over the country. People need good quality housing...