I don't even know what it would it even look like to "build a city" from scratch in the US. who does the building and puts together the central plan?
does the government build a bunch of public housing and a publicly owned commercial district? i guess they kind of have experience doing this with military bases, but at some point you need to encourage a bunch of private development and ownership, right?
or would the government just incentivize private developers to start building in the middle of nowhere and hope that a city arises as an emergent phenomenon? that approach seems like it would be rife with abuse and waste.
seems like this would be a lot easier to do with an authoritarian regime that could just decree "we're building a city here. the following industries will move their headquarters"
It's not particularly difficult to start a new city.
The government simply asks large companies to open offices/factories in the new city in exchange for tax breaks/subsidies. Or give funding to a university to open a satellite campus. All you need is a promise for like 20k people to initially move. Then the government builds roads and utility networks. Private developers will also build housing if given the right financial incentive.
The 20k people will automatically lead to the same number moving in due to cheap housing, or for creating every day businesses, hospitals, schools etc. Within a couple of years you can setup up a feedback loop where the population is growing at 5-10% every year. There is no need to force anyone to do anything. Financial incentives are enough.
Starting a city is easy, growing it into a real city is the hard part. If you look at the fastest growing cities of the last decades, they had economic freedom or booming industries, nothing that requires authoritarianism.
The western approach would almost certainly be a public-private partnership; we do that with all meaningful infra projects, where multiple industry consortia put together proposals and then one is selected to move forward. For example, for the ION Light Rail in Waterloo Region (~$1B), the winning consortium was composed of engineering and construction firms/consultants, a operations company that would run the system, plus a financier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GrandLinq
That said, for a project the scale of building a city, I can imagine it might actually be faster and more efficient for the government to just plan and build everything itself and then sell it off to private entities later.
Honestly, if you build transit, developers will build.
I wouldn't call it "building a city", but if you look at Northern Virginia today, you'll find that vertical districts are popping up along the Silver Line metro that now extends past Dulles airport.
At the end of the metro, there is literally a "town center" residential area on one side with buildings around 5 stories tall. On the other side of the tracks is literally fields, but the roads have been laid out like Sim City with empty plots and developers are now beginning to construct buildings starting from the outside perimeter first, working their way toward the metro station.
Throughout the DC suburbs, you will find densely populated areas with relatively tall vertical buildings (15-20 stories) that simply were not there 20 years ago. Reston is a good example. I've watched 4-6 buildings (over 10 stories) get built in Reston alone. They mostly started when the the metro line was finished.
tysons is a good example as well. I always think the development of the DC metro is some of the most impressive in the sense of 'cities' popping up along the train lines.
I haven't travelled the entire country but I've never seen anything quite like Silver Spring, Bethesda, or as you say, Reston. Super interesting.
Quick note that several cities were built from scratch in the UK in the 20th century. E.g. Milton Keynes. (City using the American definition, not the cathedral thing).
City of Irvine corp and California Forever corp are two examples. But billionaires in the US are constrained by everyone else. The power of democracy is strength in numbers and we have them now though we didn’t fifty years ago.
Down substantially from the peak in 2022. And that's nominal prices. Adjusting for inflation will show that real prices are lower now than they were in 2017.
Hrmm. What data source can I see to demonstrate this? I looked at a chart I have referenced before that shows nationwide USA housing starts over the last 20 years ranging from 2 to 8 per 1000 people. Then I searched for one for Canada and found one suggesting 1-2 per 1000 since 2005. And, evidently, the situation in Canada as developed/deteriorated to the extent there's a whole subreddit for the canadian housing crisis?
Yes so it looks like the Reddit people are committing major chart-crimes, showing quarterly data as such, rather than annualized rates, and not mentioning it. It looks like this is a source of truth: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=341001...
I have watched reddit become useless for any kind of nuanced debate over the last 5 years. It's rather sad to me, because once upon a time I learned a lot about others views - especially ones I disagree with.
Even HN is much less welcoming of the "I think I agree with you, but walk me through your thinking" replies than it used to be.
I presume this is reflective of a few broader societal trends, and it's.. not good.
Yes, it's easy to build entire cities from scratch in a centrally managed society, such as a dictatorship or communist nations.
It's also easy to have cities grow fast, if you're primarily a rural/agrarian nation, and suddenly have a transition to become urban. This was (for example) Canada in the 1900s. Mostly rural, yet now it's mostly urban.
Canada saw fast growth of cities back then.
It's maintaining large cities once the fast growth is over, that is a different story. How will, for example, China look in 50+ years? 100+ years? When all its newly built mega-city projects are crumbling.
> Yes, it's easy to build entire cities from scratch in a centrally managed society, such as a dictatorship or communist nations.
I would like to pushback on this assumption. I made that point because you mentioned Canada and its rapid immigration rise in the last 5 years. Western countries, namely Canada can do a lot to build more to ease the pressures on its housing demand.
Vast amounts of land is available to build amazing cities. There are specialist architect firms that can plan the most beautiful, walkable, livable, affordable cities very close to major hubs and metros currently.
In the 50s/60s/70s these very Western countries, spent a lot and built all kinds of infrastructure which led to meaningful increases in quality of life and perhaps created the most prosperous generation in these countries.
Even now when any government in the West wants to really do something, they don't really care about anything and it gets done, the money magically appears, the votes are found no matter how unpopular it may be. But for some reason building infrastructure, housing, mass transit has been completely forgotten.
The real bottlenecks are governance, bureaucracy, and NIMBYism. Like a few comments above pointed out, its keeping boomers happy with their high property values at the expense of the young.
Some things just don't make sense to me as an outsider. A few examples I read recently.
[1] It will take three decades to turn an 18-mile stretch of the A66 road in northern England into a dual carriageway.
[2] It will take 20+ years just to add another runway at Heathrow London and cost $64 Billion Dollars! [3] While Dubai is building a brand new whole airport for $35 Billion, I think the worlds largest when its finished.
Nearly all of the political problems in Canada, UK, Australia and much of the US (NYC,SF, etc.) will completely go away if they had the "Build, Baby Build" attitude. Just build housing like there is no tomorrow.
There is no such thing as an "oversupply" of a basic human need, livable shelter.
I can assure you, knowing how Asian countries like China approach governance, Chinese cities will have no major issues in 50+ years. Any outstanding issues will will resolved well before they start to become a problem with various 5-10 year plans. The same for Malaysia, Singapore etc.
At no point did I mention the current immigration rates in Canada, over the last five years. Instead, I mentioned historic growth, which is not necessarily immigration, going back 100 plus years.
In the early 1900s, on farms, Canadian families were much, much larger than they are now. Immigration was certainly a thing, and contributed to those numbers, but most of that growth was through simple population growth domestically.
Speaking to the development of cities in the past, that development was within certain strictures and guidelines, but entirely handled by the private sector.
No state-owned companies were developing houses. There were very, very rare exceptions where during situations like the end of World War II, Canada paid for base housing for its soldiers returning from war. Yet these were extraordinary circumstances. This was during the tail end of a wartime economy, and part of the transition to a peacetime economy.
This was not, and is not the normal way that Canada operates as a democracy. Not only was it to provide housing for all of the returning soldiers as they slowly left other countries that they were stationed in, it was also to provide jobs for people leaving factories that were producing munitions and other instruments of war.
Canada managed this transition exceptionally well, primarily due to projects just like this.
The point in all of this is that growth was driven organically by people simply moving to the cities. Again, yes, the cities have a planning department which dictates what may be where, how much residential space can be in a certain area, if there are going to be shops or malls or local shopping locations, where roads are going to be and so on. But that is an overall contributed by the community development plan. Developers have a say. Citizens have a say. This is called democracy.
Do not confuse nimbyism, which is primarily an American problem, with issues that have to do with building in Canada.
Again, I did not say there are no issues, I said NIMBYism is primarily in the US.
The real problem in Canada, and this is a solid show of how democracy works, is that people are concerned about things like the environment.
It's a little difficult to stomach that the very same people that will scream their heads off if environmental issues are not handled correctly, then get upset that building a house requires environmental assessments of land, environmental assessments of how population density will affect the land, insistence is that developers build parks, paths and green spaces.
When you hear the astronomical cost of building a house, when you hear the cost of red tape, what's being left out is that parts of the red tape are commitments to build things like parks, green spaces, paths, places for people to bike and walk without getting hit by cars.
All of these things add cost to the price of a house. They also add cost because developers do not follow plans, but constantly want to renegotiate over and over, and this indeed stretches out the time to build an entire subdivision.
Developers are also on hook for certain things, if they're building an entire subdivision. Roads, traffic lights, all sorts of things like this, including making sure that there's space for a local grocery store, so you don't have to drive or walk endless miles. Even things like the sidewalks when you're building a whole subdivision.
As a democracy in Canada, we like this. We prefer this. We prefer that you can get around with a car, but also you can get to your local grocery store if you want to just walk or take a bus a short distance.
If you are a person buying a single lot and wanting to build on that lot, things are not anywhere near as complex or onerous.
Yes, there are still environmental assessments. But who wants those environmental assessments? That's right, everyone, including the person buying the house, unless, of course, it might mean that they don't have a house quite as cheaply. Then, suddenly, they aren't environmentalists.
As someone who has bought land, that was pretty much the largest block on building. When it came to digging a well, when it came to building the house, when it came to the building plan that I submitted to my local municipality? All of that passed with flying colors unless of course I was doing something weird, such as building too close to the edge of the property or something else that was covered by simple, easy to understand bylaws.
I certainly support environmental assessments, but again I reiterate for a single person building a house they are typically not a problem.
There are certain segments of any society which believe that there should be no government involvement, in almost any portion of a society. These people are too far on one side, just as communism or dictatorships are too far on the other side. As with almost anything, moderation is key.
In Canada, we try to enable free enterprise. We try to keep red tape and other such issues as easy to bypass, and easy to work with as possible, while simultaneously ensuring that there is some degree of central planning and management that also has democratic citizen input.
Yet you will constantly see people of that belief trying to claim that all the issues with building houses have to do with some amount of red tape. Of NIMBYism. Yet when I look in my local community, I see people of all ages. I don't see the disparaging term that you used, boomers, causing a problem. There are people young, there are old people, there are people in their 30s, all owning houses.
Most people in Canada do not buy houses until their 30s or 40s. You may think this is a strange claim, but who wants to buy a house when they're in university? Who wants to buy a house on the first couple of years of their first job? Who wants to buy a house before they're even married? It doesn't make sense. It's not logical.
While I am an older person, I'm certainly not a boomer, as you call it, yet at the same time I did not buy a house until I was in my late 30s.
In Canada, housing pricing is where it is because of two primary reasons. The first is foreign investment. It's been so bad that in the past, that we have actually had motorandums on people that are not Canadian citizens buying houses. We have put, for example, in cities like Vancouver, taxes on empty houses because so many people from China were buying houses as investment structures.
The second reason is the lowest rate of inflation for the longest period of time, for decades.
Prior to the last few years, interest rates have been lower than they have ever been, and for a period of time longer than they had ever been.
This made housing cheaper than it has ever been before. Cheaper because when the low interest rates appeared, what the cost of a house is, is set by something called the market. Pricing is market derived. Pricing is predicated upon by what people will pay. So when interest rates drop dramatically from an amount of say 10 or 12% down to 0 or 1 or 2% over a period of about 5 or 6 years, suddenly housing is immensely more attractive. If you go to any mortgage calculator and use Canadian mortgage calculators, you can see the moving of interest rate from 1 or 2% at the bank, which I have had personally, up to say 11 or 12%, will literally more than double your monthly payment.
This means that if this condition exists for a long period of time, say almost 20 years like it did in Canada, slowly the price of houses will increase because people can afford more. This is how markets work. If people can afford more for housing then housing prices will go up just like any other type of free market competitive economy.
You can see this happening on any graph with the average price of housing compared to the price of inflation and you can see over 20 years the pricing of Canadian houses going up more than the rate of inflation and this is primarily why. Conjoin that with the massive speculation in the Canadian market and the pricing increases more.
If you take a house at $200,000 at 12% interest and you take a house at $400,000 at 2% interest, you will pay the same monthly payment approximately.
Canadian housing was quite affordable until interest rates went up. And slowly, as interest rates are higher, the price of Canadian housing cooled off and had started to come down a little bit, but now once again rates are dropping.
There are always blips in the marketplace. There are always shifts and changes. I have personally been through three separate recession events including the 2008 recession event, and all of these situations cause hardship for people first entering the housing market.
But this will pass. And it will pass and be solved. It won't be solved by turning to communism, to dictatorships. It won't be solved by getting rid of environmentalism or getting rid of planned communities.
It will be solved over a period of a few years as the market adjusts, and people can once again afford housing.
It will do so because the very people making the decisions, are not demonic old people. People have children. They have grandchildren. They want the best for their children and grandchildren. They want the best for their community.
You can be any age and be on the town council. You can be any age and be an MP.
Canada has had MPs who are under 20 in the last decade. Canada has had many MPs that are in their 30s.
There is no conspiracy. There is no attempt to stop young people from getting houses. There is no attempt to stop there from being a higher density housing in communities. We have plenty of land in Canada. We have plenty of space in Canada.
This lengthy response was engendered by the fact that you quite literally put words in my mouth. It was also engendered by the fact that people seem to think, even in Canada, that problems existing in Silicon Valley or in high-density US cities are the same problems that exist in Canada. They aren't. They are not the same problems. They are not caused by the same problems. It is not like you can copy and paste issues from American megacities into Canadian, much smaller cities.
The best way to fix some of the problems in California is to enforce open bidding on houses. When you do that, you reduce the uncertainty in bids, you reduce market pressures to increase the price of housing.
To add some more detail regarding the new capital, Jakarta has some structural governance problems in the sense that it's very hard to improve infrastructure improve / stop the sinking of the city (mostly caused from over reliance on ground water pumping and permitting corruption / bad river management). Those problems might never be solved.
And separate of it's economic power it remains a center of power where the city mayor/governor always becomes a major national political figure.
Indonesia is actually a plurality of distinct island cultures, but with Jakarta, Java and Javanese culture sits at the top of the national political hierarchy. (Not to mention a sort of internal Javanese colonialism similar to the USSR).
The new capital could be part of dismantling some of the legacy internal Javanese power structures.
(To add a further detail re. Java vs. Indonesia, because of the mercator projection it's hard to see how big Indonesia is. It would stretch from Maine, past California almost to Anchorage).
New capitals also help prevent revolutions and uprisings. It's a lot easier to have a government that's insulated from the unrest of the masses, when everyone in its capital is loyal to it.
I also imagine a lot of people who are admiring these megacities have never been to one. Jakarta has oceans of scooters and, when I was there to visit some customers with our country manager, she had a driver. With some exceptions like Singapore, SE Asian cities are horrible to get around.
Other than Singapore. I am not sure why SE Asian cities aren't going as all in on mass transit like China. Jakarta has a single subway line for 42 million people. They have some light rail line and buses. If you compare this with Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing its really night and day.
1) Lack of institutional knowledge. No one even knows how to get started and bringing in foreign expertise may be prohibitively expensive.
2) Economics don’t pencil out even in higher income countries compared to BRT systems, especially because high density and heavy traffic means the lines usually have to be grade-separated which adds additional costs compared to an at-grade system.
3) Corruption makes development impossible. No well-established processes for expropriation exist, or the country is given over to clientelism such that landlords won’t give up what they own and hamper the development process via political connections.
BRT is usually the most effective solution in places where grade-separated rail is not yet viable as it allows a right-of-way network to be established that can later be upgraded to rail. This doesn’t solve problem 3, which requires a comparatively authoritarian approach to overcome the incentive problems at play; this is why the Chinese have generally excelled in the space over the last 20 years.
Even in the US, a lot of right-of-ways were taken by the government for rail and, later, highways (which intersected with earlier railroads in many cases) before it would have been as difficult a process as it would be today. Not a political comment so much as an observation that it's harder to just take private land today.
1) I really don't see how it prohibilitivly expensive. Much poorer places have built them and there are tons of companies who are willing to do it. Specially if you have a 30 year plan.
2) Another one I don't buy if you have a 30 year plan. Buses have higher operating costs, need more space, have less capacity and the surrounding infrastructure gets more expensive. The only thing BRT is good at, is making it easier to get start because you initially don't need ground infrastructure.
3) This is much more likely.
But Ill grant you what BRT might allow you do to is ban cars from a corridor without to many people being angry, and that is a win by itself.
The water table surely has something to do with it, but they could put much of it above ground like Bangkok does (erm, Bangkok should be listed as doing ok, even if they aren't doing as well as Singapore).
China built A LOT in the last 15 years. Beijing before 2008 had line 1, 2, a couple of suburban lines (13 and another one out east), and that was it. I don't think any other country has ever built infrastructure so quickly, so it isn't really fair to compare them to China.
KL has subways. Even better is the KL city bus network which is free, air conditioned, and has free wifi. Despite Malaysia being a nominally muslim state, I found it multicultural and tolerant. If it wasn't for the heat and humidity, I'd consider it a great place to retire.
If you leave KL city and go to the surrounding areas, such as Petaling Jaya or Subang Jaya, it becomes more manageable (entering KL from there feels like a 5-10C temperature increase). It gets better the further you go of course, but for tourists that may be a bit tricky as it won't be as easy to get around (at least not without a car).
Jakarta doesn’t have one metro line. It has 9 lines which it variously calls light rail, commuter trains, etc. but are metro lines in all but name, in terms of frequency, infrastructure, and service patterns. It’s not quite Beijing or Tokyo, but it’s also not as wealthy as either city.
Bangkok has built a lot of transit in the past decade, 6 lines on top of an already-substantial existing network. Still plenty of projects under construction as well. This alone puts it way ahead of Jakarta in terms of quality of life IMO.
It's a case of better late than never. KL has a reasonable mix of subway, monorail, elevated and suburban rail. Bangkok's above-ground BTS has been very popular and they have been building subways as well. Hanoi has a master plan and has opened its first subway line in 2021 and second in 2024. Manila is also digging subways right now and has wisely called in the Japanese to do it, given that city is simultaneously subject to typhoons, floods and earthquakes.
Probably a combination of overall wealth and government policies/stability/priorities. I'd probably add Hong Kong to the list of cities with pretty good public transit but, overall, it's pretty bad in that area of the world relative to cities that you'd generally consider to be "good."
Democratic governments are weak on deficit spending, especially poor ones, the debt from their tiny stretch of high speed rail almost became a scandal.
> I am not sure why SE Asian cities aren't going as all in on mass transit like China
Eminent domain and mass demolitions were very common in 1990s-2010s China, and to a degree that I have not seen in other authoritarian and nominally communist states like Vietnam or even Laos, let alone other less authoritarian states.
Entire neighborhoods, villages, and towns were razed to build the urban areas that make up China today.
Beijing [0][1], Shanghai [2][3], and other cities across China [4] all saw massive urban demolitions until the Central Government banned them in 2021 during the Evergrande crisis [5] due to limited utility and rising urban discontent.
Back in the day, it was somewhat common to see news about some random Jie commiting a terrorist act in retaliation for being evicted from their homes [6][7] due to this urban demolition program, and partially helped Xi consolidate power as most officials affiliated with these programs were deeply corrupt, and were often felled during the anti-corruption purges (ironically, Xi oversaw similar initiatives in Zhejiang in the 2000s).
Most other governments don't see the utility of implementing a similar style of program.
In Beijing alone, some activists said more than 1 million people were forced from their homes to make way for new sports venues for last year's Olympics.
And, while you can pick and choose data, Beijing's Olympic stadium is not really very widely used as far as I can tell. Of course you can also debate whether a lot of urban revitalization projects--even if leading to popular settings/venues--were worth the cost to neighborhoods that were basically flattened.
Taiwan's mass urban demolition spree happened towards the tail end of authoritarian rule, and did in fact play a role in garnering mass support for the democracy movement.
After democracy, Taiwan shifted towards trying to preserve traditional neighborhoods or working to normalize unofficial neighborhoods and slums - basically adopting a bottom up instead of top down approach [0]
For electric vehicles, in third world countries the most obvious bottlenecks are pricing and infrastructure. However despite that, I'm quite surprised by how fast adoption actually is even when it's not as fast as first world countries.
For bikes, we already have TON of powered bikes. I can actually see electric bikes opening the eye of Americans on the wonder of scooters.
Infrastructure is expensive. It costs lots of resources and human labor and intricate planning (most SE Asia cities are not looking like anything there was planned).
Most countries on the planet simply cannot afford good infrastructure. I'm almost sure there's not even enough resources like energy and metals to create a good infrastructure in every country on Earth.
> I'm almost sure there's not even enough resources like energy and metals to create a good infrastructure in every country
As better public transport infrastructure vastly reduces the number of cars, and centralizes the requirement for both material and energy, I doubt that is the case. Buses and trains need far less of both than the population-equivalent number of cars/motorcycles.
Infrastructure is not only cars/buses. It is also: roads (paved roads), electricity lines, water pipes, bus stops, traffic lights (you won't find many traffic lights in SEA countries), train stations, railroads, etc.
It's evident if you live for several months in almost any SEA city, that they lack even basic infrastructure. I'm sure it's not only matter of negligence, they simply cannot afford many things that people in developed countries see as granted.
I agree on the difficulty of distribution of resources, just not the idea of there being a lack of them. Maybe not relevant for any practical purposes.
Everytime I see the ocean of scooters, I wonder how horrible it'd be if scooters weren't invented but instead everyone use cars like in America. Either it'll make the most legendary traffic jam ever or GDP will be cut in half since no one can move anywhere. With our already overcrowded public transport, it's practically the only alternative.
I actually wonder how much better American traffic would be if scooters are more popular.
Most Dutch people can afford cars, but many are on bikes (including cargo/e-bikes), about 27% of all "movements" [0]. This is because of the way our infrastructure is set up, the bike is very often optimal (special bike lanes, shorter routes, better/free parking at destination or public transport hubs). Most people do own a car though.
It would be subways then, not cars I suspect. At least in a city like Rotterdam (673K inhabitants) that is by far the optimal way to get around, cars are really almost useless in the city center.
Here, most of the street is already reserved for bikes, with the sidewalks for pedestrians [0]. This is all a one way street.
I can't find the link anymore, but aeons ago I read a blog post on here claiming that the Netherlands is better characterized as a city state, if you're looking at it from an American point of view: the entire country is about the same size as NYC's metro area, and around the same population.
Car ownership correlates negatively with urbanization in NL, so no, I don't think so. And no 40M city (or 4M city) convinces me driving is an acceptable way to get around.
How would Indonesians use cars that cannot go anywhere? It's not about affording but about people/m² compression.
Here's a quick napkin math: a 1.3m² scooter can take 1-3 people, a toyota camry of 8.8m² can take 1-5 people. This gives the humble scooter aprox 3-5 times the space efficiency that of a car.
Not to mention the agility and parking benefits of scooters. There's no way any SEA city could get rid of scooters in favor of cars. Scooters are incredibly under-rated in the west and my favorite tool here in SEA - it's peak practical engineering at scale.
I agree with other commenter and speed is primary danger for scooters. I've been driving for 7 years (mostly in Thailand) and never had an accident as the risk distributions is incredibly obvious:
- stay within reasonable speed
- keep distance
- don't do highways
- project your intentions very clearly with no sudden moves
vast majority of accidents happen when this simple rule set is broken (aside from obvious DUI). If you're driving 40km/h max in a city you are surprisingly safe, especially as scooter traffic culture is very river like so once you're familiar with the area you are basically being carried by the traffic.
Most stats of SEA scooter deaths are coming from really bad driving, as in drunk uncle driving a scooter on the opposite side of the road with no headlights sort of bad driving (sadly very common). The culture can be very unserious about scooter safety when it's quite achievable in practice. It really is an incredible form of transportation when taken seriously.
Since this is scooters who rarely even reach >150cc, it's actually quite safe since it's slow and light. There are always high risk when we want to go to very rough roads that are also full of trucks (common in rural areas), but in well maintained roads like lots of Jakarta, it's mostly fine.
Though it really isn't helped by attitude of people around here who aren't even wearing helms.
I got curious to see how many people have cars in Jakarta. While cars per capita of Indonesia is extremely low (~80 / 1000 people), the one for Jakarta is at respectable ~300/1000 people, not far from NYC at ~400/1000 people. Still far away from other cities though.
From my experience also, scooter is still heavily used even by people that have cars because there's just a lot of small roads and neighborhood where it's very unsuitable for cars. This also makes scooter taxi very popular here since it's cheaper, faster, and can reach the deepest parts of Jakarta.
Americans use a car because their infrastructure was build to support it. If they had cities like exist in South East Asia they wouldn't use it. Because if they did it would literally be no traffic, because the city would barly move and you wouldn't get anywhere.
These cities already have to much traffic while only a small number of people have cars.
Hehe. Great point. I have lived and worked in 2 Delhi and Mumbai in India. With such terrible living condition, traffic, pollution and so on it sucked the soul out of me. At least I found it so bad in Mumbai that many a times while leaving from work to hostel, I would literally cry on train platform with massive crowd pushing and shoving from all directions while trying to get into bursting at seams trains.
And this all is 20 years back. During this time thing have gone worse many times over.
I’ve liked living in Delhi recently, much less congested than Bengaluru that gnaws on my soul with its insane traffic. The only reasonable way to live in India is to live away from the main streets, ideally in a gated community which is a bikeable distance from work.
> In 2019, Indonesia said it will be moving its capital to Nusantara, a new city which is under construction.
Because Jakarta is literally sinking into the ocean. It also has a terrible flood problem which is only going to get worse. Doesn’t bode well for the population.
This comment clearly expands the point I made in my original comment above. When I say nobody regrets giving up alcohol, I don't just mean people addicted.
Even casual drinkers I know are so happy after giving up. They are more happy, sleep better, feel better etc.
The "socializing" people used to do with drinking, they are now replacing it by joining gyms, running marathons/ironmans and learning martial arts.
This is a broad trend among Gen-Z. Being healthy is the new flex. A great development in my opinion. I have yet to meet one person who gave up alcohol and regretted it.
I follow Asim too! A very interesting case study indeed. The boy learned to code and started working full-time for his startup.
What's really great is all the kids seem to be very well rounded and come off as pretty confident on their own. This can be seen in the videos on the YT channel.
Finishing "school" several years early is the biggest plus for me. Imagine being done with high school by the age of 14. The possibilities are endless. Learn languages, travel, learn real tangible skills, join various bootcamps.
Your kid can have so much "life" experience by the time they turn 18-20.
I need to learn how to get these Government contracts.
Do you know the design firm/agency behind this redesign project?
Side note - This again shows, in consulting/agency work, always charge more than you think. If a government department is willing to pay $97M for a redesign, then surely independent consultants can charge way more then they usually do.
>The ABC understands the government awarded business management company Accenture Australia a $78 million contract to develop the new website's content management system (CMS).
I understand why Accenture would want to charge but I don't understand why their clients would want to pay. They seem very successful at this across countries.
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