6-08-09, 9:49 am

Original source: The Global Times

At a recent Chinese-American event dinner, I had fun chatting with two interesting neighbors at my table. On my left was a seasoned Seattle urban planning consultant. Our conversation started with his tour down China’s Yangtze River last summer, and his marveling at Beijing’s decision to build the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydro project.

We then went on to the construction and architecture miracle of Shanghai, a city he also visited. The gentleman on my right in fact came from Shanghai many years ago. He beamed at the mention of the multi-style high-rises in today’s Shanghai and compared them with those of Spain’s Barcelona.

Our three-way conversation then converged naturally on the Alaskan Way Viaduct saga at home: Seattle. Mr. “Shanghai” said that the efficiency in China was scary. Mr. “Urban Planning” sighed that over here we could never get anything done. Right in the middle, I said maybe we needed something in between.

The Alaskan Way Viaduct is an elevated highway that runs along Seattle’s waterfront. Built in 1953, it was damaged in an earthquake in 2001. Since then, debate has been going on about whether to repair it or rebuild it or replace it or remove it.

Seattle mayor Greg Nickels favors a surface-tunnel hybrid in place of the viaduct, with costs estimated at $3.4 billion, while Christine Gregoire, governor of Washington State, favors a new elevated structure, with an estimated price tag between $2.4-2.8 billion. What comes next? Seattle residents voted on a special ballot on March 13. In the latest development, the state legislature passed the bill to replace it with a deep-bore tunnel.

Even for a person with no knowledge or interest in construction issues, the endless sound bites and headlines over the future of the Alaskan Way Viaduct force one to think about construction. With the dinner conversation over construction in China and Seattle, my past experience with construction rushed back.

In the 1980s, I was a resident of Shenzhen, an earlier version of Shanghai. Before 1979, Shenzhen was a fishing village across a river from Hong Kong. Its tallest building was the three-storey local government office.

From the day it was designated the first Special Economic Zone by the Chinese government as an experiment in the market-oriented economy and an export base, it adopted the slogan “ Time is Money.” It has never stopped racing since. Today’s Shenzhen is a major manufacturing center, one of the richest cities in China, with a population of more than 10 million, more than a dozen high-rises taller than 200 meters, a thriving stock exchange, and a plant where most of the world’s iPods come from.

Dubbed “the Overnight City,” it was also described as one that built “one storey a day and one boulevard every three days.” I know exactly how overnight it was. In Shenzhen, I lived in an apartment building with construction going on at night all around it.

Yes, China has been in a hurry to make up all the time lost in the past. Yes, China has no direct elections held above township and county levels or ballots on the building of a special economic zone, or a dam, or a high-rise. But the Chinese citizens’ main complaint these days is not about the speed of all the new construction: it is about the equity of the new prosperity.

The issue of the Alaskan Way Viaduct’s repair was first raised six years ago. The concern over its safety began as early as 1989 when an earthquake struck San Francisco.

It is hard to know how many studies have been conducted, how many meetings have been held, and how many politicians and specialists have worked on the issue. But an “Alaskan Way Viaduct” search at the City of Seattle website turned up 1,510 documents. The same search on the State of Washington Department of Transportation website brought up 1,200 documents. That’s a lot of talk and no action.

All talk and no action has certainly been seen on a grander scale recently in the other Washington over the Iraq War. In comparison, our question of when we will reach a conclusion over the Alaskan Way Viaduct is, at least, less life-and-death than the question of when we will see the end of the Iraq War.

Still, as Mr. “Urban Planning” said at the dinner party, how nice it would be to reach a happy medium between China’s way of construction and ours. As for the “scary” efficiency of China, as Mr. “Shanghai” described, we could really use a little here.

--The author is Seattle-based independent China business consultant, translator and writer.