The world of Teoalida

Philadelphia City Hall (1901), Singer Building (1908), Metropolitan Life Tower (1909), Woolworth Building (1913), Equitable Building (1915), Bank of Manhattan Trust Building (1930), Chrysler Building (1930), Empire State Building (1931), World Trade Center (1971), Sears Tower (1973), CN Tower (1976), Petronas Towers (1998), Taipei 101 (2004), Shanghai World Financial Center (2008), Burj Khalifa (2010), Jeddah Tower (under construction).

North Korea is an interesting country for being full of mysteries. It is the most isolated country in the world and most of information comes from government media, tourists and defectors, which contradicts each other. All articles about North Korea found on internet have less or more degree of inaccuracy, including my own article.

North Korea is widely considered as the worst place to live. In reality, it is not that worse, living there is just… different than the rest of world. North Koreans have no contact with outer world and live happily as long they do what the Supreme Leader wants and obey stupid laws, brainwashed by government that their country is the best on earth. While the industry is lagging several decades behind rest of world, the population is one of the most educated in the world, reaching a level of order and discipline that should be example for any citizen in the outer world.

At first impression, North Korea looks a developed country, with high literacy rate, beautiful architecture and well-planned cities, but actually it is one of the poorest countries in the world, and the single highly educated country suffering by famine. The economy started rising again in 2000s, but most of money goes to political elite and their nuclear program, while population suffer from malnutrition.

Hong Kong is the most vertical city in the world according Emporis Skyline Ranking, beating cities like New York, Singapore, or Sao Paulo in the number of high-rises (with over 12 storeys) or skyscrapers (over 100 and 150 meters in height), also beats all records of proportion of population living above any given storey number, but it has been recently defeated by Dubai in terms of supertalls (over 300 meters).

The massiveness of skyscrapers contrasts with the extremely small apartments, typical size is 35-45 sqm for 3-room and 50-60 sqm for 4-room. 3-room is most common apartment type, but today there are more 4-room under construction. Same for Macau too. Minimum ceiling height is 2.5 meters.

Once you leave Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, you enter in a very different world. New Territories include few “New Towns” less dense, but still with massive apartment towers. Unlike Singapore which is fully urbanized, HongKong also have rural areas, low-density village houses in New Territories, that foreigners call them “slums”. Hong Kong have lots of nature, scenic roads, forest walks, hiking trails, etc.

Price of typical, 50 sqm apartments vary from 2 million HKD (250,000 USD) in New Territories to over 6 million HKD in Hong Kong Island, even higher prices in Mid-Levels.

Malaysia have a total of 7,346,910 housing units, of which Detached 2,416,210, Semi-detached 528,408, Terrace/link 2,570,317, Townhouse 32,682, Cluster 63,345, Flat 744,187, Apartment or condominium 716,729, few more housing types do exist (as 2010). Home ownership ratio 72.5%.

Latin american cities are more denser and the life is cheaper compared with North American cities, but due to rapid and unplanned urbanization, infrastructure is worse, parks and green spaces are scarce. Same problems like in US, lack of public transport, pollution, crimes, corruption and gang life (especially in Mexico).

Although certain cities in Latin America have high human development index, the income inequality is huge, leading to high crime rate. Large part of population is living in slums, some being built on mountain side and overlooking the waterfront crowded with luxury apartment towers for ultra-rich people.

Africa is the least studied region of world by me. Known for poverty and civil wars, I though that is nothing interesting there, until recently… Africa does have interesting architecture that worth studying!

In my opinion, most beautiful city in Africa is Luanda. with many modern housing complexes built after 2000. Impressive for such an African country. The biggest housing complex, Kilamba New Town was built in 2007-2012 by Chinese developers and cover 8.8 sq km, it comprise about 750 blocks with only 3 apartment types: 3-bedroom (90-100 sqm?), 4-bedroom (120 sqm), 5-bedroom (150 sqm). For years it was a ghost city with slow selling apartments due to high prices and difficult mortgages.

I gained just little knowledge about China housing, although I spent much time studying China in Google Earth, without english websites I cannot do proper research, also I see China a bit uninteresting compared with other countries I studied. I do not know when public housing began, but satellite photos shows that early public housing is already being demolished during 2000s.

Nowadays most of housing in China is privately built. Chinese cities are monotonous (like South Korea cities), having rows of linear buildings with identical apartments all over the city. From satellite photos I can see that most common block type is segmented block with 2 apartments per floor, with main rooms facing south, typical size 16 m long and 12 m wide, no significant increase over last 10-20 years. Most blocks are 6 floors, probably maximum height allowed without lifts. Most blocks are placed at 15 meters apart, probably minimum by law (quite dense compared with other countries).

Since 2000s number of high-rise buildings increased rapidly, residential towers with more complex shapes, but the construction of traditional low-rise linear blocks continue. Most apartments have 2-3 bedrooms, some 4 bedrooms, and include a balcony for living room.

Housing in Europe is pretty similar all over the continent. If you though that ugly panel block public housing exists only in former communist eastern block, you are WRONG. Western Europe have ugly public housing too, but it is hidden at city outskirts and built to improve standard of living of the poor, usually inhabited by immigrants, it became criminal enclaves. In Eastern Europe you see ugly public housing everywhere in the city. Socialists governments demolished most landed houses inside cities including historical monuments and forced everyone, even the rich class, to move in low quality apartments.