China used more cement in 3 years than the U.S. did in the entire 20th Century

Re:China used more cement in 3 years than the U.S. did in th... by barkingcat on Tuesday March 24, 2015 @06:04PM (#9259815)

Wait why is this bad? I thought it was crappy statistics handpicked to make China look good!?

Why is progress in countries outside the western civilizations a bad thing?

Don't we want the people who make our iphones and oculus rift headsets and shiny usb-c devices to have apartment buildings to live in?

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Re:China used more cement in 3 years than the U.S. did in th... by tdaltonc on Tuesday March 24, 2015 @06:10PM (#9259853)

It;s not the progress that would make them look bad. it's that cement production produces a huge amount of CO2.

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Re:China used more cement in 3 years than the U.S. did in th... by EliRivers on Wednesday March 25, 2015 @08:20AM (#9262417)

Don't we want the people who make our iphones and oculus rift headsets and shiny usb-c devices to have apartment buildings to live in?

I'd rather they had nice houses instead.

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Re:China used more cement in 3 years than the U.S. did in th... by dagw on Wednesday March 25, 2015 @08:27AM (#9262451)

Why? So that China experience the 'luxury' of endless suburban sprawl and the myriad of problems it brings. Hopefully China can learn from out mistakes, not repeat them

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Re:China used more cement in 3 years than the U.S. did in th... by EliRivers on Wednesday March 25, 2015 @08:54AM (#9262556)

No. Because a house is simply a nicer place to live than a flat.

It's very possible to have nice houses without endless suburban sprawl. They can indeed learn from our mistakes; have nice houses, but without endless suburban sprawl.

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Re:China used more cement in 3 years than the U.S. did in th... by dagw on Wednesday March 25, 2015 @09:18AM (#9262691)

First of all I absolutely reject your claim that houses offer a priori simply a nicer place to live than flats. Sure there exists certain combinations of price point, geographic location and life situation where it holds, but it certainly isn't a given.

Secondly how are you going to build nice affordable houses for 1.4 billion people without sprawl. Are you suggesting completely giving up on urbanization and going back to having countless tiny villages?

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Re:China used more cement in 3 years than the U.S. did in th... by EliRivers on Wednesday March 25, 2015 @10:05AM (#9263000)

There are many very nice places to live in the world that are not afflicted with suburban sprawl and provide houses to live in, yet are not tiny villages. I'm not going to sit here and fill in the gaps in your imagination; I suspect you've already made your mind up.

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Re:China used more cement in 3 years than the U.S. did in th... by dagw on Wednesday March 25, 2015 @10:14AM (#9263054)

There are many very nice places to live in the world that are not afflicted with suburban sprawl and provide houses to live in, yet are not tiny villages

Absolutely, but they either suffer from rapidly rising houses prices or no appreciable population growth. If you stick to a population ceiling of say 50k or so then many problems are easy

But we are talking about about places that are seeing up to a million new people show up in just a few years. Building everybody a nice house is neither realistic nor, in my opinion, desirable. We've either got to re-think the whole "everybody gets a nice house" or try to reverse urbanization in favour of lots and lots of small town capped at around 50k population.

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Re:China used more cement in 3 years than the U.S. did in th... by abalashov on Thursday March 26, 2015 @03:19AM (#9268195)

I would personally contend that flats are much nicer places to live than houses. I would loathe to live in a free standing house.

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