Shenzhen: from zero to 12 million residents in four decades

Shenzhen: from zero to 12 million residents in four decades

Shenzhen isn't a conventional city: it's an experiment with a start date. It was established in 1980 and today has more than 12 million residents, a leap that would short-circuit any European urban planner. Aerial videos are impressive, of course. But the scenery explains nothing: the useful question is who lives there, where, and in exchange for what.

And there the story splits in two. Some look at the drone and see the future. Others look at the same drone and see a corporate park with housing left out of frame.

What Shenzhen is and why drone videos are misleading

The city was founded in 1980 and in four decades has become one of the country's largest. The contrast with what it was then is, for anyone who has trinc it, more spectacular than today's skyline. There's a detail that often gets missed: many of the skyscrapers shown in the videos are not housing. It is argued that they are corporate headquarters and that the real city—where people eat, shop and sleep—is left out of frame.

That is probably the most repeated objection: no one disputes the buildings; what's disputed is what they show. And it's not a minor nuance, because everything else hangs on it. If what is being shown is a financial district, the enthusiasm for urbanism is only half the story.

A 20-cent metro and BYD electric buses

The most repeated fact is not visual. In Shenzhen all city buses are electric and they are made by a local company, BYD. The metro costs as little as 20 cents. An eye-catching comparison is circulating about air: a quality index of 63 in Madrid—with half the population on holiday—versus 65 in Shenzhen, a city twice as large and in full working activity. Poor air quality is concentrated, according to this analysis, in older cities like Beijing.

It should be taken with a pinch of salt, because these are one-off measurements from uncited sources. Even so, the logic holds: a city built from nothing in 1980 does not carry the industrial dead weight of others. The full breakdown of that comparison—what is measured, when and with which station—is exactly what is missing to settle it completely.

Surveillance, freedom and the model's price tag

The toughest front is not aesthetic. It is argued that the population is under surveillance and that noncompliance has practical consequences: there is talk of difficulties accessing rental housing or buying plane and train tickets. The most widespread label is that of a Brave New World-style future with a dose of 1984: no matter how many LED buildings there are, it is argued, nothing makes up for the absence of freedoms.

The reply comes from another angle. Cases are cited of respect for private property that are missed in Spain, such as homes that survive a highway expansion because their owners rejected compensation. In other words: the same system that restricts also protects, depending on which slice of life you look at.

The xiaoqu model and street life

Those who have been there describe something else. Compared with Beijing or Shanghai, Shenzhen appears calmer, with less brutal traffic, plenty of parks and real green spaces, and street life open almost 24 hours a day. The credit is attributed to the xiaoqu model: a gated development with an open, landscaped interior space designed for neighborhood use.

What it lacks, the same person admits, is an old town: in Shenzhen you don't jump 500 years in two metro stops, because there is no past to jump to. And there's an economic note that reinforces the thesis: the corridor it forms with Dongguan functions as China's Silicon Valley, with technology parks under construction.

What to expect

If the infrastructure and cost differential holds, the current that sees Asia as Europe's successor has arguments. So does anyone warning that a country can build twelve million residents in four decades without that answering the uncomfortable question. With reservations: the model will be judged by where people live, not by how it looks from above.