no more gated community in the future?
The state council in China published some guideline for the future urban development on last Sunday. The point which is widely discussed by the public is: “The open communities must be promoted for the future development, and no more gated communities will be built in principle”.
I don’t think this advice will be promoted easily, especially for the establish communities.
Here is my opinion:
For the established communities:
- First of all, the security problem. After the opening, everyone can go inside and outside freely which will significantly increase the difficulty of property management and also impact the safety of communities.
- How to compensate the stakeholder/the house owners? They have spent for the environment, facilities or amenities inside the community, after opening, all of these will be shared. How and who compensate the environmental deterioration and the maintenance fee? I don’t think the government will and should do that, and it even hard to say will have any conflict against existing property law.
- Most of the roads inside gated communities are not designed for massive, high-speed traffic, and also the open of communities’ road will increase the conjunctions on the adjacent municipal roads. Will it be even worse scenario rather than it expects, the transportation will be improved?
For the new development in future:
- There is no doubt that it will be impact to the housing price, even more, the developer must pay for and build the municipal roads insides the whole development. All of above will decrease the profitability, therefore, without any encouragement or compensation, no one will do that.
- The term, ”in principle”, is very ambiguous, as I mentioned above, no developer will scarify their money to follow such an ambiguous word.
As an urban planner:
Yes, I totally support, with no doubt. This action will increase the accessibility of pedestrians. Many large scale gated communities were built within the new developed urban zone. It’s boring and struggling to walk on a street with 1km long fence and no one want to go out by foot. I think this is one of the reasons that why Shanghai and Beijing has significant traffic jam. Except for lack of public transportation and urban sprawl problem, without an attractive street facade will depress the willing of walking.
Finally, I never think that planning could achieve any things, except for arrange the land use rationally, without the invisible hand of economic and appropriate management.
对于上周日发布的《中共中央国务院关于进一步加强城市规划建设管理工作的若干意见》中，关于「新建住宅要推广街区制，原则上不再建设封闭住宅小区」这条受到了广泛的讨论关注。
我觉得这条意见的推广会困难重重，特别对于现存的小区而言。
原因如下：
对于现存小区而言：
- 首先受到关注的是安全问题。开放小区后，非小区人员的自由进出对于物业管理和小区安全都不是好事。
- 对于业主或者既得利益者而言，如何补偿呢？他们购房的时候，价格包含了小区内的所有环境和设施，小区开放后，意味着共享，造成的环境恶化还有维护费用的分摊都是巨大的问题。而在此问题上，我猜政府不会，也不应该对此动用行政支出进行补偿。而且，这是否有违现存的物权法，侵害业主的利益呢？
- 小区道路本身设计标准比市政道路低，难以承载作为市政道路所产生的交通流量。而且开放接入后，无形中增加了临近市政道路的交叉口，影响现状交通，是否会有违原本希望改善交通的意图呢？
对于将来新建小区而言：
- 开放小区设计毫无疑问会造成售价的下滑，同时，估计未来开发商还要承担小区中间市政道路建设的费用，这两方面都影响着开发商的盈利能力，如果没法补偿由此产生的影响，没有商人会去玩的。
- “原则上”这个词难以界定，既然是非强制的，而且明显对利益有所损害的游戏规则，又有谁去跟着做呢？
作为一个规划师而言：
我是完全赞成这项决定的。开放式街区的设计无形中能提升行人的可达性。在中国城市的新城区有大量的超大型门禁小区，沿着一条一公里长的篱笆走路真不是什么愉快的事。我觉得这也是为什么北京和上海有特别严重的交通问题。除了公共交通不足和城市蔓延外，无趣的街道也会降低人们选择步行出行的意愿。
最后我想说，城市规划的能力是有限的，没有良好的城市管理和背后经济的推动，一切都是纸上谈兵。
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