New City

My city is not all futuristic like this, I just liked the idea :-)

So today I thought I’d tell you about where I’m living now. It’s colloquially called ‘New City’ because it is literally a new city. Basically the government decided they wanted another city, so they built one. Someone – or a group of someones sat down and planned a city for a few million people in a spot where at that point in time there were only fields and ruralness. They planned the roads, where the buildings would be, where the schools would be and how many students would go to the schools, everything. Then they called in the contractors, and the money people and they began to build.

It is very strange. Have you ever played the game SimCity? Well I feel like I’m living in SimCity. My idea of city growth up until this point has been that it is rather organic. Someone builds a house, and then someone else builds one down the road. Other people build nearby, maybe some industry starts that brings more people. When there are enough people a school gets built, some restaurants, shops, etc … At some point official planning for growth begins, but generally that is years down the track.

This is completely different. There is building going on all around me, next to my institute there are two buildings being built and another two nearing completion on the corners of the block, and then there is another empty lot  just across from my institute. I expect them to start on that any day … My apartment has an empty lot next to it that is currently used for parking, but I am waiting with great interest to see the building process up close and personal.

Speaking of parking, that seems to be the only thing that hasn’t been planned. People park anywhere and everywhere. There are lines painted on the road, indicating that they are supposed to have two lanes, one for each direction, however because of the random parking it is next to impossible for two cars to pass each other on these roads. It is also impossible to walk on the foot paths, because of all the cars parked on them, so the people walk on the road with the cars.

During the day the population seems to double as all the builders pour in and begin their trade. The sounds of construction here are quite different to what you would here in New Zealand. There are no hammer percussion noises or electric drills or anything of that nature. Building here consists of framing up an entire floor, walls etc, inserting reinforcing steel and pouring concrete, then when the concrete is hard the frames are removed and they start framing up the next floor. When all of the concrete pouring is finished they put paper on the inside walls, hang the doors and insert the window frames, and they clad the outside of the building in something that I assume is designed to make them look artistic, interesting and different to the other buildings nearby. This is a rather hit and miss process. There are definitely some ‘interesting’ buildings around, some are more artistic than others. One building close to my place always makes me think of swiss cheese.

Where I live is the centre of the town, the shopping district basically. My apartment building fronts onto the park/playground and is upstairs from a Chicken Restaurant. I always wanted to live upstairs from a shop, but I had in mind something more like the coffee shop in ‘Friends’ not a chicken restaurant. In this area the buildings are not more than five stories tall. Ringing this shopping district are maybe a hundred or so twenty-ish storey apartment buildings in various stages of construction and occupancy. About half are still being built and about half are completed and have any number between zero and one hundred of the apartments rented out. On average I would say that at this time there is maybe 40% occupancy in the completed buildings. Some are probably 80% full, others appear to only have two tenants in a building that could hold one hundred families. I’m making this assessment based on the number of lights that are on at night.

Like I said it is very strange, if you go out after 10:30pm the place is deserted, that is not the Korea I know. The Korea I know has the streets teeming with people at all hours of the day and night. On the other hand I don’t know of any other country that would build on this scale. There is even a high school that looks like it is set up for two to three thousand students, but I think they can’t have more than two to three hundred – if that, based on the number of students I see wandering around after school. And the primary school also is way under capacity.

There is a saying “If you build it, they will come.” That is exactly what is happening. New City has been/is being built and the people are coming and filling it up. One day I asked my students how long their families had been living here, most of them have been here only a few weeks longer than I have. The longest was six months. Every day I see real estate agents showing people around, young couples with children, older couple wanting to retire, people looking to start their own business and in the evenings I see people who are obviously new to the area out exploring, or maybe scoping out the competition. Like the saying says “… they will come.” Lots of the people who have come so far seem to be starting businesses, but what they are starting are restaurants, coffee shops and hairdressing salons. There are many many many of these shops, I don’t see how they can be making a profit, there can’t be enough people here yet to support them all, and still they open more, every day there is another grand opening for something. The only people I think who could possibly be making a profit are the real estate agents, and there are plenty of them too.

So that is my new place in the world, host of my new adventure, ‘New City.’