When the council held its annual conference last week in Shanghai (what better place to celebrate the cult of tall?), the city’s vice-mayor told delegates that Shanghai had no choice but to build straight upwards: with 23m people, 9m of them new migrants, the city could not afford to go any shorter. But it might be risky to assume from his comments that the city’s most expensive vanity project will be turned into housing for low-income migrant workers. It seems a fair bet the real reason has more to do with the fact that the city’s current tallest building, the Shanghai World Financial Centre, which commonly known as the “bottle opener, was built by the Japanese.
高层建筑与城市住宅委员会不久前在上海召开年会时(还有哪个地方更适合举行这种“身高控庆祝活动?),上海市副市长告诉与会代表们说,除了垂直向上建设,上海别无选择:上海的总人口为2300万,其中900万人为外来人口,它没法不建更高的楼。但如果我们假设他说的意思是,上海极其昂贵的面子工程会变成为低收入外来务工人员提供的居所,那可能不太靠谱。一个靠谱的假设似乎是,上海建高楼的真正原因更多的在于,该市目前最高的建筑“上海环球金融中心(被人们普遍称为“开瓶器)是日本人建造的。
Like the Empire State Building or Sears Tower, the mainland’s supertall buildings are the sign of a new triumphalism – and not just in architecture. Ultimately, China’s best reason to put up an 838-metre building in three months may be: just because it can. For the middle-schooler or the middle-kingdom government alike, the point of being tall is to prove you are better than the next guy. And in China, such competition is serious business: even Chinese cities most of us have never heard of are building their own twin towers. The rest of the world thinks tall is beautiful, too: they are just not quite so obvious about it.
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