Practical considerations aside, however, many Shenzhen officials also associated skyscrapers with progress and material development and were correspondingly eager to break ground on new landmarks.Ĭhina’s first multi-use super high-rise building, the Shenzhen International Trade Center, was completed in 1985. Given the city’s relatively small geographic footprint, it was natural that Shenzhen’s planners would build upward. The unprecedentedly rapid development of Shenzhen - summed up in the expression “Shenzhen speed” - seems to offer visible proof of the efficiency of China’s socialist system relative to the “capitalist world” across the river. Forty years on, the stagnant northern reaches of Hong Kong pale in comparison to the rows of gleaming high-rises on the Sham Chum River’s northern bank. Separated from Hong Kong by only a narrow river, the contrast between Shenzhen’s poverty and Hong Kong’s prosperity stimulated Chinese leaders’ ambitions for reform in the early 1980s. The city’s ambitious approach to development is reflected in its built environment. Home to some 20 million people, it is almost synonymous with the success of China’s “reform and opening-up” period. In the four decades since, it has grown from a sleepy agricultural border town across the Sham Chum River from Hong Kong into one of the world’s largest megacities. One of China’s youngest cities, Shenzhen’s rise began when the central government named it one of the country’s first special economic zone in 1980. But perhaps no city was more affected than the southern metropolis of Shenzhen. The document, which marked the formal end of China’s skyscraper boom, had ramifications for cities across the country. Last July, China’s powerful National Development and Reform Commission issued a notice banning the construction of buildings taller than 500 meters.
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