Cloudy in Beijing Blogging about my time in China

Redevelopment

The old neighborhood located on the way to my school received some news last week. The entire place is slated to be bulldozed.

The municipal notices were mysteriously pasted on a few walls within the neighborhood last Monday. People crowded around the posters, silently reading the details of how they had no choice but to move out. Within a few days, both notices were torn down, perhaps due to unhappy residents.

The neighborhood is admittedly an  eyesore for the area. Whenever I pass by, its hard not to notice the trash that piles up on the streets, leaving the faint smell of sewage in the air. At the same time, this neighborhood is the only one I know of in Beijing where so many stray dogs run about.

So as China continues to develop, neighborhoods like these are often the target for new development. Residents living in the neighborhood, however, will be compensated for their lost homes and businesses. People can expect to be paid around $824 for each square meter of their residence; a "1 to 1 ratio" in terms of compensation versus the cost for a new residence according to local news reports.

While this all meant to be fair, I'm not sure what kind of apartment this will be able to buy or how moving will be arranged. The starting cost for most new apartments in Beijing averages around $3000 per square meter. Older apartments can go around for $1000 per square meter.

It will be interesting to see how things unfold in neighborhood as the weeks go on. Residents have six weeks to agree to move  out in order to be awarded the fair compensation. One government official was quoted as saying they are taking a "move out first, then receive benefits" approach in regards to the residents. Holdouts will not receive special treatment he added.

As of now, nothing has changed in the neighborhood. In the morning, the streets are still lined with vendors selling hot dumplings and fried bread. At night, people sit outside and enjoy sticks of cooked meat.

But I know things can change very quickly. When I was living in Xi'an, I witnessed the same thing with another rundown neighborhood where I lived. One day people were living in the old apartments there. The next day, the place  was evacuated and abandoned. And within a week, the bulldozers had come and completely leveled area.