![]() ![]() Metro Lines: First metro line planned to open in 2015.GDP in 2011: RMB 561.93 billion (compared to Shanghai’s RMB 1.92 trillion).Consider a few of Changsha’s basic economic indicators (courtesy of Wikipedia): While the city has received considerable attention in the past few years as an emerging centre in China, its economy clearly is not ready to support the tallest building in the world. ![]() The economic need for a super-tall building in Changsha also can be called into question. Unless, hotel guests are expected to commute from Sky City to downtown Changsha, the hotel rooms would need to be filled with guests from companies with offices in the tower, which would mean each company in the building would need to have 5.5 clients, vendors or employees staying at the hotel every day. With180 companies in the building, and 1000 hotel rooms, there appears to be something of an inbalanced ratio of hotel rooms to companies. Given the small amount of the project devoted to commercial development, the rationale behind the hotel portion of the project also seems questionable. However, if one calculates that the average office for a large company in an emerging city such as Changsha is likely to require only 200 sqm of space, then the developers will have to convince 180 companies to shift their offices to this agrarian location. With regard to commerce, according to Broad, three percent of the space will be allotted for office space, which means 36,000 sqm of offices – not a huge amount of space in China. If, as the developer claims, the objective of Sky City is create a wholly self-contained city, then it will be likely to face the same challenges that any other urban development project wold face if based far away for current centres of social and economic activity. While Broad Group has secured 67,000 sqm of land for the project, a look at the above photo of the site from last year shows that there is no infrastructure or other commercial activity in the area. Photo of the site for the Sky City project One of the big questions to answer about Sky City is who wants 1.2 million square metres of space in the middle of a Hunan rice field? However, as Mingtiandi is not expert on construction technology or project management, it may be best to simply look into the real estate economics of the project. The proposed schedule for the project, and the ability of an inexperienced company such as Broad to tackle the many challenges involved in such a super-tall building have led many observers to predict major struggles for the project. Broad chairman, Zhang Yue confirmed in an announcement at the groundbreaking on Saturday that his company plans to complete Sky City in April 2014.
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