tbh my relatives live in an urban area of like 200k? 300k? which like i guess is a city but like they still have an orchard bc nobody has bought it up to build apartments yet but also all of the children have factory jobs so it's kind of weird.
Replies
a 1M metro area would definitely be urban by asian standards i guess but i think (i) is it plausibly 'provincial' and (ii) the other thing is that 'rural' areas in asia are incredibly dense
sep 1, 2025, 6:28 pm • 1 0 • view
Too small for urban rail, given Brazilian incompetence in infrastructure :(
sep 1, 2025, 6:46 pm • 1 0 • view
hanoi and hcmc only started having urban rail in 2020 so
sep 1, 2025, 6:50 pm • 2 0 • view
(we are not Poor but we are still poor)
sep 1, 2025, 6:50 pm • 0 0 • view
Also incompetent in rail construction or so I've heard from @alonlevy.bsky.social
sep 1, 2025, 6:51 pm • 0 0 • view
frankly until rather recently passenger rail was supposed to die out altogether and the railways bureau or whatever had long turned into another state organ that basically manages real estate; it's only very recently as provinces started hiring foreign consultants that rail is planned for again.
sep 1, 2025, 6:54 pm • 4 0 • view
Yeah, and that's the problem - Hanoi outsourced building the metro to China, and HCMC to Japan, and in both cases costs have been very high, much higher (in PPP terms) than the costs in China and Japan themselves. Vietnam's a big country, it should be able to build things on its own like Korea.
sep 2, 2025, 2:05 am • 5 0 • view
honestly when making that tweet i wasn't even thinking of that, i was thinking about how half of the recent provincial-level planning documents were prepared by european or american management consulting companies LOL, but yes we have/had no domestic knowledge on railway construction i think
sep 2, 2025, 2:29 am • 2 0 • view
This is really bad. The East Asian developmental states generally got the knowledge domestically. But HK, Singapore, and Taiwan privatized the planning process, essentially because the first two were Thatcherite early and the last only started building the MRT when privatization was more in vogue.
sep 2, 2025, 2:41 am • 2 0 • view
Singapore and HK are contenders for second worst construction costs in the world (the US is worst), together with Canada, Australia, the UK, NZ, the Gulf states, Egypt, and Bangladesh. Taiwan is somewhat better but is a strong contender for worst for a non-English-speaking democracy.
sep 2, 2025, 2:42 am • 2 0 • view