China has restricted the construction of “high-rise buildings” in the country’s smaller cities as part of a broader attempt to crack down on so-called vanity projects.
The country has some of the tallest buildings in the world, such as the Shanghai Tower, which has 128 floors and 623 meters high; the 115-story, 599-meter Ping An Finance Center in Shenzhen; or the Guangzhou CTF Finance Center, which has 111 floors and 530 meters high.
Although there is a prohibition for buildings of more than 500 meters, constructions of these characteristics proliferate.
Some local media have even questioned that low-density cities have such tall buildings suggesting that they are built for vanity and not for practicality.
Earlier this year, the country went further and outright banned the “ugly architecture”.
“We are at a stage where people are too passionate and eager to create or produce something that go down in history“said Zhang Shangwu, deputy director of the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at Tongji University.
“All buildings aspire to be built to mark a milestone, that is why developers and urban planners try to achieve this goal by extreme novelty and strangeness,” he added in dialogue with the South China Morning Post.
In a joint statement issued Tuesday, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, and the Ministry of Emergency Management, said the cities with less than three million of inhabitants will have restricted the construction of skyscrapers of more than 150 meters.
Also, cities with a population mayor to three million may not construct buildings of more than 250 meters Tall.
