[namelosw]

> This is definitely a characteristic of Chinese culture urban "planning" (operative term is the quotes).

> You can see the same "ad hoc"-ratic development "philosophy" at work in Chinese cities today.

First, it was 4000 years ago when the Chinese culture was completely different.

Other than that, it's still not entirely accurate. If anything, the planning is very diverse or bumps between extremes in China. You can check out Beijing or any historically important town with walls on the map. Most of those cities are carefully designed in square shape, and every important building is facing towards the south. Things are intentionally majestic. Form over practically sometimes.

Most of the examples you have mentioned are southern cities, which are probably heavily influenced by the Suzhou garden design. The most famous Suzhou garden is the Humble Administrator's Garden [0]. The idea of the garden is to use a lot of obstacles and irregular shapes to segment zones. In terms of practicality, it creates more "rooms" instead of wasting space with empty squares. In terms of aesthetics, it creates discoverability where every turn provides a different scene. But most importantly, it's carefully non-majestical to not offend the emperor - the holy ruler of the absolute monarchy (who can easily execute any a whole clan at will without justification). You can also feel the uneasiness even in the garden's name itself.

But indeed, a lot of Chinese cultured towns are chaotic by nature. My personal take is regions like Europe and Japan with feudal backgrounds are sufficiently decentralized with proper hierarchy, making every piece of land plan things for themselves, the lords, the church, and the guilds can design and interact back and forth. However, China is purely top-down and lacks organizations between the imperial court and individual levels (the feudal system was brutally wiped out 2000 years ago and made very few unsuccessfully comebacks). Any non-imperial organizations like mansions guides are highly discouraged as those are seen as potential threats. Chinese society in modern terms is a "flat organizational structure", and its people are just individuals (clans and families are often forced apart, and shuffled between lands). As a result, we can see towns as official projects are built in orthodox ways, which are the rest are littered with ad-hocness.

Actually, in the South, there were also quite some fortresses that were well-designed and typically resided in difficult terrains such as Tulou [1] (man, they look like Apple Park). Because they were large clans living in remote provinces, the imperial court had a hard time dealing with them so often the court didn't bother.

> In my experience, the one exception is Hong Kong

As a guy who spends most of my time living in Beijing, my first impression of Hong Kong is its chaotic (in a good way, I love it). You probably know Hong Kong is the most important reference for those cyberpunk concept artworks. Singapore, IMO, is more well thought out beforehand in terms of urban planning.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humble_Administrator%27s_Garde... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujian_tulou

[keepamovin]

Why take issue with it? My experience is accurate, maybe your experience is different. They can both co-exist, right? Or is there only "1 true way"?

> But indeed, a lot of Chinese cultured towns are chaotic by nature.

See we agree? :) I told you I was right. Thanks for sharing your perspective, anyway! I learned something about the background, it's good to know! :)

> First, it was 4000 years ago when the Chinese culture was completely different.

I'm saying, in this way, it wasn't.

> ... Things are intentionally majestic. ...

The majesty you mention accounts for imperial buildings, right? Those are indeed well designed. But that is not how "the people" live. It is not the culture overall. It is a testament and symbol to an ideal and a governing system. But outside of these glorious compounds, it's Chinese culture's inherent urban chaos, not the Emperor's aesthetics, that reigns. No?

A point you seem to support in ...

> ... it's carefully non-majestical ...

This is very interesting. Thank you for that education. It has added to my knowledge and perspective! Very interesting.

Also, but I wouldn't really consider Shanghai a southern city, would you? I think there are plenty of undeniably northern cities that would be chaotic: there's so many, pick one--Tianjin? The downtown and main places are gorgeous for sure, but what about the suburban places, the crowded developments and residential skyscrapers, is the urban design of the streets around these places highly ordered? How about the subway? I don't know. My bet is no, tho, based on my extensive experience in Chinese cities--but in truth, I really do need to collect additional experience with more of the very many mainland cities I have yet to visit!

> ... But indeed, a lot of Chinese cultured towns are chaotic by nature ...

I think to be honest there you need to say cities not towns, to not artificially misrepresent that this ad-hoc chaoticness is only a provincial thing, not something seen in the bit cites, when in my experience it very much is so! It permeates the very fabric of Chinese culture (rich fabric to be sure, but this thread cannot be denied). You seem to provide extensive additional support for this idea by your invocation of the deliberately a-majestic Suzhou Garden, and the non-threateningly 'flat org chart' of Chinese society, both very illuminating for me to hear (but also reinforcing of my aforementioned contemplation upon my extensive experience).

[namelosw]

> See we agree? :)

Yeah. I was trying to explain why the chaotic parts are there and there are quite some notable exceptions.

> I think to be honest there you need to say cities not towns

TBH I was very hesitant to pick the word town or city or any others because in my mind it was the generic "城/Cheng" in Chinese. I find the nouns are often culturally specific as cities, castles, churches, and towns are European-oriented and more specific than "Cheng".

> Also, but I wouldn't really consider Shanghai a southern city, would you?

It's a southern city. Geographically speaking, China was divided by the Yangtze and the Yellow River into three 1/3 parts. Shanghai is located on the Yangtze so it's in the South. The south/north divider is the Qin Mountain range and Huai River line [0]. That's the line where the culture, climate, and pretty much everything differs drastically.

> pick one--Tianjin

Well, that's a sophisticated example that I happen to know about (I just realized there's even a wiki but in Chinese [1]):

- Almost every taxi driver in Beijing who has been to Tianjin told me how they got so frustrated with the road system. It's not hard to guess, since the roads are around the river and not as perpendicular as Beijing.

- But the old Tianjin was a squared town before the Western countries moved in. The town resides to the west of the river, exactly within today's north, east, south, and west roads (Dong, Xi, Nan, and Bei Malu). In the center it's the drum tower. Outside there were walls and moans and all that.

- So it didn't appear to be particularly chaotic to me at that time, at least there were quite some designs as you can see. And it wasn't nearly as important historically until the West started to settle in China. At least compared to Xi'an, Luoyang, Kaifeng, Zhengzhou, etc.,

- Later, the Western countries set up settlements along the river both on the east and west banks. The city started to grow. That's where the messy road system comes from.

> but what about the suburban places

But yeah, many suburban areas are a mess. While I kind of agree there is some chaotic nature, most culture does that without professional modern urban planning departments. Slums are very, very common outside the first world. Back in the old days in Europe, slums were also easy to be seen outside cities and castles.

Another factor is Tianjin was way messier decades ago. In 1976, there was a great earthquake and Mao died. A lot of the buildings were destroyed or damaged, and a lot of people would then rebuild their houses without proper knowledge and skills. Most of those were lost in the cultural revolution. People would randomly put together bunker-like stuff in random places and call it home. The same situation happened in Beijing - you can find Hutongs in Beijing are very chaotic, which should have been less so before the cultural revolution. Here's a video about the Beijing side of the story [2].

> It permeates the very fabric of Chinese culture

Honestly, I'm not very sure of it. On one hand, it's indeed chaotic as we can often see. There are also Chabuduo (good enough) and Meibanfa (there's nothing can be done) cultures. On the other hand, the Chinese also like to pursue regularity such as a lot of things have to be made in the shape of squares and circles. Numbers in designs and shapes have to be "stable" as 4 and 8. Those are not just for nobles, normal people do care and sometimes OCD about that, too.

I don't know man, if anything, Chinese culture is full of contradictions and confusion as always :)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qinling%E2%80%93Huaihe_Line [1] Wiki on old Tianjin (Chinese version only, unfortunately) https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hk/%E5%A4%A9%E6%B4%A5%E8%80%81%E... [2] https://youtu.be/3uo47m-1gQ4