What Happens in Dongguan, Stays in Dongguan

“If you can make 1 dollar in Hong Kong, you can make 2 dollars in Dongguan.” In China’s globalized economy, any location is a good location for a factory or hotel, so long as land is cheap and competition can be minimized. An economy of speculation, which fuels Dongguan and Shenzhen’s roaring fires, makes use of land as a resource – outside the SEZ, with some land-owners holding only a 20-year lease, it makes sense to relocate every time this lease expires. Knowing that the value of the land will likely increase (and therefore, cost more money to re-lease), there is little incentive to build the necessary infrastructure to maintain and enhance development beyond a subsistence level. This tactic of economic slash and burn, followed by fields left fallow, makes a wasteland of cities. With no time for development, Dongguan and Shenzhen seem to be regions lacking centers – strangely, even a Google Earth search for these areas, which usually zooms to the city center or to a prominent building, in the case of Dongguan and Shenzhen centers on vacant lots or unfinished towers.

However, the potential for reassignment of program, or an evolution from user-driven design to program-driven design seems great. The almost viral quality of transitory habitation in these cities makes them perfect targets for reclamation, and the speculative economy of the Chinese “boom-town” guarantees that these cities will see a second life. Perhaps “spatial money” is a too loose a system to ensure lasting development of a city.