[HN Gopher] Urban Design and Adaptive Reuse in North Korea, Japa...
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Urban Design and Adaptive Reuse in North Korea, Japan, and
Singapore
Author : daveland
Score : 57 points
Date : 2025-06-13 02:01 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.governance.fyi)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.governance.fyi)
| daveland wrote:
| OG Title : Adaptive Reuse Across Asia: Singapore's Fragmented
| Ownership, Japan's Rural Revival, & Korea's Material Limits
|
| It was a bit long and whatnot, so I edited down. Turns out to be
| a pretty good interview about a guy (Calvin Chua) who teach Urban
| Design in North Korea for a bit
| Onavo wrote:
| The issue with trying to study US YIMBY through the lens of Asian
| urban planning is that most of these Asian countries have very
| different approaches to civil rights and private property than
| America. Japan has the added complication of routine natural
| disasters forcing rebuilds of housing. Singapore is a tiny city-
| state with a strong single party unicameral government (no
| separate parliaments, no municipal/state/federal divide) and a
| willingness to use eminent domain powers (and you don't "own"
| property there, most land is not freehold, you are merely
| temporarily leasing it from the state). South Korea is more
| similar to the US with a high percentage of rental owners but
| they also have a negative population growth (same as Japan). The
| less said about North Korea the better. People in these countries
| are also used to public transport, which is completely
| unacceptable to most Americans used to car ownership.
|
| In short, some of these models are nice to be admired from afar
| and I definitely recommend going in person to to experience them,
| but I doubt there's truly any interesting takeaways that truly
| useful for the US.
| decimalenough wrote:
| None of this has anything at all to do with the contents of the
| article.
| binaryturtle wrote:
| I'm from the EU, not the US.
| bluGill wrote:
| You can substitute EU for US and large parts of the point
| remains. The context of the EU and Asia is also very
| different. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.
| We should still look at what others do, but we need to be
| careful extrapolating as sometimes things are the way they
| are because of some factor nobody is even aware of.
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| USA isn't the centre of the world.
| decimalenough wrote:
| Interesting stuff. I did not realize it was even possible to
| build a 40-story building without using steel. (I mean, I presume
| they use _some_ , just a lot less if the walls are load-bearing.)
| BrenBarn wrote:
| Given that it's North Korea, I wouldn't be surprised if their
| standards are rather low and it's obliterated in an earthquake.
| duxup wrote:
| It's not clear to me if it is a good idea or even safe.
|
| This might be one of those "yeah it's possible".
| SECProto wrote:
| Looking at Wikipedia[1], the >=40 storey buildings look pretty
| typical, I assume you're correct that they are using some. Some
| look like older designs with external shear walls, which reduce
| the exterior windows. That said, it's certainly possible to
| build tall buildings without structural steel reinforcing - can
| look at all the tall old cathedrals, pyramids, etc that surpass
| 140m height (40 storeys at 3.5m each)
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_N...
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| The interviewee sounds like a insufferable navel-gazing
| professor. A lot of platitudes and very evasive about anything
| concrete. (the interview section doesn't add anything new to the
| top intro/description)
|
| "the agenda of rethinking the peripheries" - how can this not
| elicit an eye-roll..?
|
| At least props to the interviewer for calling him out on "heroic
| architecture". A very "humanities" move, make up some bullshit
| term, don't explain it, make your interlocuter guess and feel
| like an idiot.
|
| the TLDR of the main thesis is when you redesign a space, try to
| see if you can preserve the existing social structures and
| perceive how people interact with architecture before you roll in
| with the bulldozers. But it doesn't really present any concrete
| examples, so whatever..
|
| It seems there are maybe kernels of some good ideas, but then
| everyone started to enjoy the smell of their own farts too much
| nayuki wrote:
| > Singapore's "strata malls" let individuals own shops outright,
| not rent them. Any building change needs 80% owner approval.
| Result: retirees treating shops as social clubs, refusing
| million-dollar buyouts. These malls become uncurated havens for
| niche businesses and retirement communities disguised as retail.
|
| Note that "strata" means "condominium":
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strata_title ,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condominium .
|
| There are some interesting observations about commercial retail
| condominiums in Toronto. Several "dead malls" with quirky shops
| and low foot traffic are retail condos (i.e. with individually
| owned units, not rented from the building owner): Aura (Yonge &
| Gerrard), Chinatown Centre (Spadina & Sullivan). Because the
| units are owned, they can't be kicked out on a whim in order to
| change the variety of shops in the mall.
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(page generated 2025-06-13 23:01 UTC)