building on spatial credit

It is one thing to build the shell of the building and let the occupants design/decide what goes inside. Many American architects do this, especially for skyscrapers. It was the approach taken by Cook+Fox for the One Bryant Park tower, and it is not uncommon for a firm to refer to itself as "core and shell" architects.

But it is quite a different thing to build a structure without even knowing if it is to be inhabitated, and what's more, not caring if it is to be inhabited. The Chinese are building on spatial credit, consuming now what will be needed in the future. It is a flaw in statistical strategizing that they measure economic success by amount of built space, and a flaw in governing structure that that statistic is being manipulated through forced infaltion. But it is an interesting architectural strategy to simply put up the frame of a building for someone else to fill in (or not) and inhabit (or not).

I can't help but draw connections to the current condition of Syracuse - vacancy initiated not through choice and bureaucratic zeal but through abandonment and neglect - which is a city full of empty frames waiting to be filled up. Right now, there are many of these empty frames in Syracuse becoming re-inhabited: the Warehouse, the fabric of the near west-side, various infill buildings downtown being converted to housing, and (most famously) Armory Square. The city, having been deserted and forgotten, has turned into the coveted Tabula Rasa where any intervention is good intervention. What China is doing is constructing vacancy, simply skipping the golden age bit and skipping straight to revitalization. And this is nothing new. Historically, newly developing countries have been known for skipping a few crucial steps that their predecessors took so that they could advance faster and catch up/surpass those predecessors. Just as America's industrial machine quickly outpaced the rusting British industrial establishment, so has China's (sub)urban sprawl quickly surpassed the lazy American dream.