Chinese residential city blocks aren’t any denser than American ones, they do have more green space though. Paris is one of the densest cities in the world and it doesn’t really get taller than eight stories high.
Levallois-Perret is a commune bordering on central Paris, and a comparable size to a single arrondissement (subdivision within Paris proper). For example, the 11th arrondissement [1] is 50% larger and 100% denser than Levallois-Perret. But it doesn't count because it isn't it's own separate administrative area.
All this to say: the closer you look, the harder it is to rank places by population density. The comment point was that high population density can be reaching without high rises.
Aren’t Parisian apartments also really small? I’m in a 90 sq m two-bedroom in Seattle and I shudder to think what I’d have to pay in central Paris for that.
The trick with density is all about making those skyscrapers occupied.
The giant vacant housing inventories have not gone down much over the years. Cheap housing sells well, but giant mansion apartments that got trendy at around 2012-2015 are really unsellable, and there were really a lot of them built in urban centres.
Believe me or not, Shanghai has few places with 10 years old "brand new" apartments.
Few people people can afford giant mansion apartments, but that doesn't mean they all stay vacant. With a lot of improvised plumbing and wiring plus drywall each of the original giant rooms can be turned into a much tinier apartment that can be rented out individually. I have lived in such a converted apartment and while it was pretty obvious that the original floorplan wasn't made for so many small units, I got used to it pretty quickly.
They always will be. The Chinese place much more value on owning (as opposed to renting) than other people do.
That is why the rhetorical enemy of communism in China was "landlords". It's why a fundamental platform of the current CCP is that landownership is illegal. ("the land belongs to the country", 土地是国家的)
It's also because there aren't really alternative investment forms. Investing abroad is heavily restricted. Local investment markets are not mature enough for there to be Chinese equivalents of 401ks. And local pensions aren't great.
Housing is pretty much the only thing in China that has generated positive return on investment.
Whatever about other parts of China I do not believe there are 10 year old developments in Shanghai with brand new apartments unless you mean people who are holding unfinished concrete shells as investments and there are some of those in central, lived in developments.
Getting any place within ten minutes taxi ride of a metro occupied is easy. Might be hard to sell it but you can rent it easy.
It is exactly what it is. 400m2+ apartments overloaded with styrofoam barocco decorations, appliances, furniture, ready for people to move in, just sitting there and rotting. I saw photos myself: plastic parts yellowing, styrofoam curlies cracking, organic materials getting mouldy here and there, and centimetre thick layer of dust on everything.
When they were put on the market 10 years ago, they were sold at such unimaginable, even for China, markups that even multimillionaires would've not gone for them. It was clear that the only buyers for them would've been some nouveau riche suckers.
They will not find buyers these days anymore. The example above is still on the side of the extreme, but say 3-4 year old developments being 50% vacant is a norm for 200m2+ apartments.
I find this difficult to believe. Chinese apartments are not sold furnished like you describe. They’re sold as bare concrete shells. Apartments like you describe are overwhelmingly rented, not sold. Usually when people buy a pre-owned apartment they strip it down to the concrete and redo everything.
Well, they are more efficient and free up space so you could have green spaces around them.
See a bit what Le Corbusier was doing with its "Unité d'habitation": A large building that also included amenities and a park around it.
Edit in response to Barry below: Whatever Le Corbusier's faults, "Unité d'habitation" [1] was indeed designed to be pleasant and liveable, and including a school (originally) and a floor for shops and amenities.
Examples of this working in practice would be appreciated. Le Corbusier’s name is mud among urban designers because he focused on how things would look in scale model or from an airplane, not on whether it made for a pleasant or livable environment. Architects love him obviously, but like Frank Lloyd Wright his individual residential buildings are surprisingly affordable because they’re great to look at rather than to live in.
Le Corbusier’s ideal city was something like Brasilia, which he designed. Hostile to pedestrians, made for motorists, with no mixed use spaces anywhere, with residential, commercial and industrial spaces completely separated.