# The Most Dynamic Cities of 2025



## Rekarte (Mar 28, 2008)

little universe said:


> Key findings:
> 
> 
> *Top 20 Cities in Nominal GDP (Billions of US Dollars) by 2025*


Not your fault ofc, but this ranking is wrong, forget that the GDP of Seoul is just the city not the metropolitan area(like in NYC e Tokyo for example)
where are Osaka?


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## Dimethyltryptamine (Aug 22, 2009)

Yeah, people should remain poor so it's an interesting place to visit. 

Reality is, there will always be poorer, lower class people. Countries like Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, etc aren't even exempt from this. Though admittedly the poor probably live better than the middle class in China.


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## little universe (Jan 3, 2008)

:tongue4:


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## Dimethyltryptamine (Aug 22, 2009)

thank you.


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## the spliff fairy (Oct 21, 2002)

I agree, I don't want China to become filled with MacCities as a few prominent politicians are already complaining about. As Tad mentioned it really is the nadir of the Chinese way of life - inventiveness, practicality, life lived out on the street, community and a whole lot of people watching, street food and theatre. Poverty does not always equate with danger, destitution and destruction and I'm sure becoming middle class doesn't always equate with blandness and cookie cutter commercialism either, but I hope some sort of balance can be found.

There are a couple of cities I've got an eye on that are bucking the trend of creating the ubiquitous highrise jungle or courbousien fascism - Suzhou, which is restoring literally thousands of streets in its old city, and Kaifeng, once the former capital and that recently announced it would 'restore' the look of the centre to its old image. Suzhou has its skyscrapers separated in a new district and its Old City preserved using a height limit. Kaifeng has no skyscrapers despite its size (5 million metro), and long an embarrassment for its residents as highrises sprouted in every other town and city in China. This is due to Kaifeng's remarkable history - once one of the world's largest cities through history it has been flooded no less than 120 times, and destroyed by flood 14x, 9x by earthquake, 6x by fire, and 11x taken by assault. The earth, and the several layers of silt preserve countless artefacts and ruins, hence why no skyscrapers were ever built for fear of digging too deep.

Insofar as creating Chinatowns in China, or a retail theme park akin to Shanghai's 'Old City', the detailing and materials are at least faithful, and a better option than the soon-to-be-generic mall under a supertall. Problem is both types of developments clean out the local populace, who despite the compensation, lose their way of life and the city loses a valuable part of its social history. If there was a way to replace the ugly highrises of the 80s and 90s, or restore the old buildings into commercially viable- yet still residential spaces, while keeping the original inhabitants, it would be great.

For places like Beijing I can sort of understand how a megacity of 20 million can't realistically function with a city centre made up of one storey houses and an average 1 sq meter living space per inhabitant (you read that right), no matter how historic (the old laws forbade any buildings taller than the Forbidden Palace buildings - a 3 storey limit is still in effect for the vicinity), but I think some kind of chequerboard preservation, with small neighbourhoods and surroundings prerserved would have been doable, rather than blanket destruction. What is crazy in Beijing is that bastardised old neighbourhoods are now being razed to make way for grander 'preservation', as specific areas revert to accurate 19th Century plans and appearances copied from old photos. 


Although the authorities are starting now to cotton on to the fact that having old districts is actually economically profitable, and future proofing, far, far too many cities not just now but throughout Chinese history have gone the way of complete destruction, either through the name of regime change, disaster, or sheer lack of respect. Given the history of the nation it's a wonder anything survives - every new dynasty would destroy the old. More recently almost every major city was razed in the 19th Century during the Taiping Rebellion (the world's second worst war in history, taking over 30 million lives), then what was built after went down with colonialism, the Civil War, WWII, the continuation of the Civil War, Cultural Revolution, and now the mass industrialisation of today. Compare China with Europe's record - another region often blighted by war, disaster, and idiotic postwar planning, but many, many cities still managed to rebuild and preserve despite.


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## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

No Manila, KL, Dubai?


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## calaguyo (Nov 28, 2008)

These kind of surveys are very subjective. They rely based on growth (constant and uninterrupted). They do not consider risks such as natural calamities, ageing population, inflation growth, political interventions etc...

Who would thought of stagnant (if not decreasing) growth of US and Europe in this era?


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