China Restricts Construction Of Skyscrapers, Bans Buildings More Than 500 Meters Height

Illustration of skyscrapers in China. (Wikimedia Commons/Wilson Hui)

JAKARTA - Chinese authorities have restricted the country's small cities from building skyscrapers, super-tall buildings, as part of a larger effort to crack down on vanity projects.

China is one of the countries that has some of the world's tallest buildings, including the Shanghai Tower which has 128 floors or 632 meters high, aka the highest in this country.

Next, the Bamboo Curtain Country has a number of other skyscrapers, such as Ping An Finance Center 599.1 meters, Guangzhou CTF Finance Center 530 meters, Tianjin CTF Finance Center 530 meters, and CITIC Tower 527.7 meters.

Local reports have also questioned the need for low-density cities to build skyscrapers, pointing out that they were built for vanity and not practicality.

Citing BBC 28 October, there is already a ban on building taller than 500 meters.

The announcement received mostly approval on Chinese social media site Weibo, with many declaring the super-tall skyscraper "not necessary, just to attract attention". Earlier this year the country issued a ban on "ugly architecture".

"We are at a stage where people are too hasty and want to come up with something that can truly go down in history," Zhang Shangwu, deputy principal of Tongji University College of Architecture and Urban Planning, told the South China Morning Post.

"Each building aims to be distinctive, and developers and urban planners try to achieve this goal by going to extremes in the new and the strange," he explained.

In a joint statement issued on Tuesday this week, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development together with the Ministry of Emergency Management said cities with a population of fewer than three million people would be barred from building skyscrapers taller than 150 meters (492 feet).

Those with a population greater than that will be restricted from buildings taller than 250 meters.

The ministry clarified that special exceptions should be sought if a city with an urban population of less than three million wants to build skyscrapers taller than 150 meters.

However, under no circumstances would they be able to build a building taller than 250 meters.

Similarly, cities with an urban population of more than three million can under certain circumstances apply to build skyscrapers taller than 250 meters, but with a strict ban on buildings above 500 meters.

Those who approve projects that violate the new rules will be held "liability for life" the statement added.