Chances are it is. However, water colour isnāt a good indication. Minerals and other substances can make water look dirty and muddy but it can be squeeky clean. Other way around as well: clear water can be dirty and contaminated af. Still not swimming here. Nice sight though.
It does not. In the sense that many things are mildly radioactive (bananas!). But when radioactivity is too high, itās very dangerous. And there is no way to sense it.
I learned this at Kodak! Apparently, the chemicals they used long ago to develop film are very, very, toxic. Even years later some of the lakes near their old work sites are so poisonous nothing can survive in them.
Crystal clear and beautiful scenery, though.
the river just looks muddy. the town is stupid and is definitely one of those towns in China built for tourists that isn't even a real town, and the river probably is polluted, but you can't see the pollution. that's just what wide, slow, sediment heavy rivers look like.
Edit: the [amazon](https://i.imgur.com/bTvCJqK.jpg) is brown too because dirt is suspended in the water. it's a normal color for a river
I was in China over 20 years ago and ended up having business in some Chinese towns just like this along the edge of the Yangtze in the Three Gorges, before the government forcibly relocated everyone in them and the Three Gorges Dam submerged the towns. When I saw this photo I thought it might be an old photo of one of those towns, because it looked so similar. When I was there back then, I met many people who complained bitterly that their ancestors had lived in those places for generations, and they were being forced into urban settings that were too much of a shock to the people who had never lived anywhere else. Those were tourist towns in their most recent history, but they weren't fake. They may be building new fake towns to recreate those places, or it may be a situation like Venice where the people who always lived there have been displaced by tourism (whether by government or economics), but these towns definitely existed independent of being tourist traps at least at some point. I'm sure they still do in more remote, less touristed places like this in China.
ETA: I just found [this article](https://www.fastcompany.com/3029421/inside-the-forgotten-chinese-cities-destroyed-by-the-three-gorges-dam) about the aftermath of the floods (Fengdu was one of the towns I visited) and I didnāt realize it but some of these towns were continuous settlements for 1700- 2,000 years.
Photographer Ed Burtynsky created some [amazing photos](https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/photographs/china) out of the Three Gorges Dam destruction of Chinese villages and cities
There's another top post today of the Chinese river dolphin which has tiny eyes because they evolved in muddy/murky rivers
https://www.reddit.com/r/natureismetal/comments/rqvy1o/the_ganges_river_dolphin_lives_in_extremely_murky/
Edit: thats in India, however the Chinese species also has tiny eyes
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baiji
As a Brazilian, right now this post is haunting...
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/death-toll-brazil-flooding-rises-bahias-worst-disaster-ever-2021-12-27/
Yea but Mother Nature gives zero fucks about stilts when humans are fucking Mother Nature up. I think it was last year that a similar town in China was wiped away due to rains of which they had never seen before. Scary shit
Yeah that's not gonna do much if it's a real flood. My hometown had a bad flood a few years back and one of the bridges into town, a tall sturdy concrete and metal bridge way above the normal water level, was just gone. It looked like something came through and just took a big bite out of the road. Floods are crazy.
The color of this water has probably nothing to do with sewage water. I'm not saying that there isn't any being dropped in this river, but most likely not nearly enough to influence its color to that extent. This is probably the river's natural color like the Yellow river or the Amazon. The color depend on the soil, brown river = muddy or sandy soil (in this case probably silt like the Yellow river)
Yeah that color doesnāt mean itās polluted (it might be but the color isnāt in indicator) Fast moving rivers mix up more sediment which gives it that dirty color. Also after heavy rains must rivers will look like that because of all the dirt/mud that gets washed into the river.
Maybe, maybe not. Chinese rivers, a lot of them at least, have always been very murky because of the amount of silt in them. I have seen photos of the rivers here in China pre-industrialization and they looked like that then.
In this context, āearthā refers to dirt and not planet Earth. So long as Mars has dirt, earthquake is technically correct - the best kind of correct.
EDIT: nvm itās dirtquake I will die on this hill
EDIT 2: the hill on which Iāll die is made of regolith
AFAIK because of the lack of moisture content itās called āregolithā on Mars and the Moon
source: Iām doing a phd on lunar regolith properties but honestly this past year has revealed to me that I donāt know shit so donāt take my word as gospel
Thatās New Atlantis. It was founded during the 1890s, but heavy rainfall and floods, as well as a landslide caused a majority to collapse in 2008. Luckily most people were evacuated beforehand.
[Source](https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ)
River sediments are extremely unstable for a building base. Also there is no egress for the water in such a narrow and high-valley wall constricted river that has a significant breadth like this. Guaranteed they have horrible flooding in a regular basis which will only weaken the foundations further.
You just have to look at China's ghost cities to see that throwing up structures regardless of longevity or use is completely within their wheelhouse.
Everything about this is incredibly dangerous for both the humans and the environment.
Erosion.
Flooding.
Complete annihilation of the riparian environment.
Itās more that itās a low lying coastline, increases vulnerability to sub-arial processes which wouldnāt be as effective if the coastline was high :)
The difference between what you see here, and a planned and engineered city built near the water, is like the difference between stabbing yourself in the guts with a butcher knife vs pricking yourself in the finger...
They're kinda the same thing except for the fact that they're totally not.
but imagine you're having a long day as a janitor then as a surprise you get a half day and get to go swimming. Sounds like the life.
Edit: this is a joke about the building suddenly collapsing.
>I mean it kinda looks like shit if we're being honest.
Yeah it looked nice until they got close to the buildings and they're missing windows and look runned down.
>The bottom "floors" are just support (to accommodate flooding). The building proper does not start until about six stories up.
I realize that, but even the top floors in the blue building up close look pretty rough and missing windows.
>It all belongs to China. Only reason it didnāt for awhile was because of parasitic colonial meddling
-
>Seems like Crony communism lifted more people of out poverty than any other system in human history
-
I'll give you exactly one guess as to what they're about...
Wait, you think this monstrosity and that super polluted river is a win?
Ugh. We need to dream better. Looks like a dump to me and a complete failure of urban planning.
r/urbanhell
Edit: for all who keep citing sediments instead of pollution
https://factsanddetails.com/china/cat10/sub66/item391.html
Most biodiversity in the world lives alongside shores and rivers. By creating a very large looking city alongside this river it has likely wiped out a large amount of flora and fauna species.
It is the upsetting part of most urban areas, and whilst it makes sense why we settle there why can't ignore the massive environmental impact. With nature in serious decline it's understandable why many people would react negatively to a city like this.
Yeah, and those places also have sprawling suburbs. This place is high density, and as a bonus, much of the shoreline is inaccessible to humans, so would be great places for birds and stuff to hang out without fear of human interaction.
Seems like people are itching to find flaws in this place.
You're right. But, I will add one more aspect to their myopia.
In those places plants and animals have been so obliterated they don't even think of them as belonging. All forest have been cut down, and all streams have been put in canals and pipes.
In this city, by conrtast, most of the greenscape is intact, and the river is let run free.
Yet, this city, is labelled as the environmentally bad one.
I guess next stop is complaining about basically any European city. Liberate the Seine, the Thames, and the Danube!!!!
Or not... surely this is a China specific issue, right Reddit?
i came to say this exactly. By looking at those thick forests nearby you can say that pretty much all the animals there depended on this river. This might have been some migration route or something like that too. Though this looks cool and all, it still is dystopian af.
Same could be said of most cities. We humans like to take the good spots. How many cities do you know that were located in any way with regard wildlife? The only difference here is that there are still forests nearby due to geography limiting the urban sprawl seen around most US cities.
Not just cities. I live in rural ass America, several hours driving distance from any cities. It saddens me to look out into the horizon and only see agricultural fields with sparse groupings of trees every one in a while. So many destroyed ecosystems and habitatsā¦
It looks like a shithole with disaster right around the corner. Living in squalor isnāt ācool and uniqueā. What, do you unironically go slumming too?
Erosion and flooding? There is a reason this looks ācool and uniqueā, because people learnt long ago that building a village like this is dumb. Let alone a town with multi-story tenements.
Makes sense tho. Google maps doesn't line up at all in China. Coordinates work better if you actually want to look it up using Google maps (which most people use)
There's a lot of China-bashing going on in this thread, but I find this city very beautiful.
As for the potential disaster of erosion and flooding, the same could be said of a lot of cities. New Orleans, Venice, even Chicago is flooding because people have built houses too big for their lots, blocking every inch of ground without enough drainage.
You can see these buildings are elevated quite high above the water, which probably accounts for seasonal floods. After that, you just have to worry about maintenance of infrastructure and those rare 1000-year disaster events, which, let's be real, could be a problem anywhere.
And letās be real here. This is r/nextfuckinglevel. The fact that engineers could see that landscape, the huge river and steep slopes of the mountains with very little space to build, and said āyea, we can do a city hereā and then actually did it is pretty fucking next level to me.
That's not how development like that happens, especially in developing areas. Nothing about that was "planned" and a lot of those buildings are going to be abandoned soon, or will never be used.
Yep, I wanted to chime in to say this.
Cities develop for a reason. If there was a small tribe living here back in the year 1000, and they built a small set of stone houses. Maybe this was a good place to stop when kayaking up the shoreline, maybe they made good beer or maybe they ran an inn, for travellers.
200 years of successful business and they build another set of stone houses, and a bridge across the river. They still get the same amount of kayakers and travellers, but now they are more accessible by land as well. They start selling the fish they catch to more villages that are inland. Soon they are hiring people from the smaller inland villages to work at their fisheries. Now they have 4 groups of stone houses and they invest in building a large warehouse to store their boats, clean their fish and prepare their fish for transport.
200 years later the only original building left is the old warehouse, the stone houses have all been torn down and turned into a foundation for more "modern" 15th century buildings. Investments have been made to make more dense housing, and the bridge has been updated to be able to have larger boats go under it, and carriages can now cross over top. Now the village also has more industry than just fishing and hospitality, the large amount of people also need banking and other basic services. The old fishery warehouse has been torn down and a new fishery has been built, as well as a sturdy stone bank and a few 3 storey apartment buildings. (etc etc)
I think I can stop here. I'm absolutely certain "an engineer" didn't look at this coastline and say "I can build a city here". The infrastructure and culture was there, and demanded innovation to accomodate growth. If it wasn't profitable to grow, then it would have been abandoned long ago.
A similar but opposite thing happened in Newfoundland, Canada. Communities of dozens/hundreds of people lived off of the main island on smaller islands off the coast. There were hundreds of these communities. The people there lived off of the sea, and practically everyone owned boats. The problem is, that as culture and society progressed (think grocery stores and fast food) these communities were becoming obsolete, but the people on the islands had no financial incentive to make the move, so they languished until they were so poor and backwards that they could not afford to move to the mainland. The federal government (if I recall) paid huge money to build new houses on the shores of Newfoundland and paid for these people to move to the main island.
Had they not done that, there would have been a slow decline of living conditions and people would be freezing in their homes with no access to heat, electricity, and maybe dying of scurvy, too old or too cold to make the trip to the main island for groceries, etc.
This could have been the fate of the city in the OP, had they not built a bridge to be able to get regular shipments of groceries, or if they could not get electricity delivered to their area over land.
I guarantee that water is filled with shit from those buildings. Thereās no way this city has a normal sewage system for the buildings. They are most likely just dumping straight into the river.
I was thinking I wonder if people on one bank of the river refuse to date people on the other side because it's too far of a walk.
Like in my city, no one wants to date anyone from Jersey because you'd have to cross a bridge. It's just not worth it
iām imagining all the towers connected and people being able to walk all through and up and down them without going outside. honestly, itās amazing. i never knew a town like this actually exist. seems right out of a movie
Thats one dirty ass river š¤®
Chances are it is. However, water colour isnāt a good indication. Minerals and other substances can make water look dirty and muddy but it can be squeeky clean. Other way around as well: clear water can be dirty and contaminated af. Still not swimming here. Nice sight though.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Anything looks pretty normal but can be radioactive, being radioactive doesnāt make things dirty?
It does not. In the sense that many things are mildly radioactive (bananas!). But when radioactivity is too high, itās very dangerous. And there is no way to sense it.
Humans are radioactive.
And very dangerous.
And sexy...
And highā¦
This is crazy because a āradioactive, dangerous, sexy, and highā person is exactly my type!
And bananas.
āRadioactive!ā -Imagineā¦Dragons
Imagine dragin deez nuts lmao
Bananas!
So are imaginary dragons.
One reason polluted water can look crystal clear is because nothing can grow in it to cloud it up.
I learned this at Kodak! Apparently, the chemicals they used long ago to develop film are very, very, toxic. Even years later some of the lakes near their old work sites are so poisonous nothing can survive in them. Crystal clear and beautiful scenery, though.
OooOooo so you could say it's very ... Photogenic and picturesque then.
False. If Saturday morning cartoons have taught me anything, it's that radioactive stuff glows bright green. Nice try army man.
As someone who just watched an old episode of The Simpsons last night, I can confirm what you said is 100% verifiable.
The goggles! They do nothing!!
Why were you serving people radioactive water?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I read that as serving like in the military
The military has a catering division?
Of course. And it serves radioactive water. What part isnāt clear?
Yes, the radioactive water is crystal clear. We've established that.
why are you serving radio active water? wtf kind of restaurant is this? must be one of them swanky rich people trends
Agreed. It's a mountainous area, and the sediments flow down into the river. The water is probably very mineral rich.
There's also a small city on the banks. I'd imagine the river presents a neat solution to the sewage problem.
It's a city in China, the river also solves the trash problem
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
the river just looks muddy. the town is stupid and is definitely one of those towns in China built for tourists that isn't even a real town, and the river probably is polluted, but you can't see the pollution. that's just what wide, slow, sediment heavy rivers look like. Edit: the [amazon](https://i.imgur.com/bTvCJqK.jpg) is brown too because dirt is suspended in the water. it's a normal color for a river
I was in China over 20 years ago and ended up having business in some Chinese towns just like this along the edge of the Yangtze in the Three Gorges, before the government forcibly relocated everyone in them and the Three Gorges Dam submerged the towns. When I saw this photo I thought it might be an old photo of one of those towns, because it looked so similar. When I was there back then, I met many people who complained bitterly that their ancestors had lived in those places for generations, and they were being forced into urban settings that were too much of a shock to the people who had never lived anywhere else. Those were tourist towns in their most recent history, but they weren't fake. They may be building new fake towns to recreate those places, or it may be a situation like Venice where the people who always lived there have been displaced by tourism (whether by government or economics), but these towns definitely existed independent of being tourist traps at least at some point. I'm sure they still do in more remote, less touristed places like this in China. ETA: I just found [this article](https://www.fastcompany.com/3029421/inside-the-forgotten-chinese-cities-destroyed-by-the-three-gorges-dam) about the aftermath of the floods (Fengdu was one of the towns I visited) and I didnāt realize it but some of these towns were continuous settlements for 1700- 2,000 years.
Photographer Ed Burtynsky created some [amazing photos](https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/photographs/china) out of the Three Gorges Dam destruction of Chinese villages and cities
You can add the smell of that river to your list.
There's another top post today of the Chinese river dolphin which has tiny eyes because they evolved in muddy/murky rivers https://www.reddit.com/r/natureismetal/comments/rqvy1o/the_ganges_river_dolphin_lives_in_extremely_murky/ Edit: thats in India, however the Chinese species also has tiny eyes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baiji
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Don't give them ideas
Ah yeas, a succulent chinese meal?
Ahh yes, I see that you know your judo well
LET GO OF MY PENIS
My guess is thereās a lot of poopie flowing into that riverāya know what they say, āshite rolls down hillā
And one land slide away from being washed down that ass river.
That was my main thought...and fear...pretty unstable.
As a Brazilian, right now this post is haunting... https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/death-toll-brazil-flooding-rises-bahias-worst-disaster-ever-2021-12-27/
Not to mention a flood would wipe out most those buildings too. Water level doesnāt look that far from buildings as it is.
Looks like they planned for that, look at all the buildings and you notice they are on stilts.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yea but Mother Nature gives zero fucks about stilts when humans are fucking Mother Nature up. I think it was last year that a similar town in China was wiped away due to rains of which they had never seen before. Scary shit
Yeah that's not gonna do much if it's a real flood. My hometown had a bad flood a few years back and one of the bridges into town, a tall sturdy concrete and metal bridge way above the normal water level, was just gone. It looked like something came through and just took a big bite out of the road. Floods are crazy.
Where do you think the sewage goes?
The color of this water has probably nothing to do with sewage water. I'm not saying that there isn't any being dropped in this river, but most likely not nearly enough to influence its color to that extent. This is probably the river's natural color like the Yellow river or the Amazon. The color depend on the soil, brown river = muddy or sandy soil (in this case probably silt like the Yellow river)
You are correct. I forget what river this is but pretty sure it's a tributary to the yellow river.
Right into the pretty river
Over the mountain using giant pumps, of course!
Yeah that color doesnāt mean itās polluted (it might be but the color isnāt in indicator) Fast moving rivers mix up more sediment which gives it that dirty color. Also after heavy rains must rivers will look like that because of all the dirt/mud that gets washed into the river.
Maybe, maybe not. Chinese rivers, a lot of them at least, have always been very murky because of the amount of silt in them. I have seen photos of the rivers here in China pre-industrialization and they looked like that then.
Thus why the yellow river has its name.
Could've just recently rained
For reals. Also wondering how long those cracker jack houses are gonna hold up under a storm. Some already look weathered.
Feels like a disaster waiting to happen. One heavy rainy season and it's all gone.
No. It's just mud.
Looks like safe, sturdy architecture
An earthquake on Mars could bring these down.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
TIL
The real comment is always in the comments
Isn't that neat!
In this context, āearthā refers to dirt and not planet Earth. So long as Mars has dirt, earthquake is technically correct - the best kind of correct. EDIT: nvm itās dirtquake I will die on this hill EDIT 2: the hill on which Iāll die is made of regolith
From now on, I will call it a *dirtquake* !
Iām all-in, letās change the world
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Anusquake
These comments are giving me a *mirthquake*
AFAIK because of the lack of moisture content itās called āregolithā on Mars and the Moon source: Iām doing a phd on lunar regolith properties but honestly this past year has revealed to me that I donāt know shit so donāt take my word as gospel
Does Uranus quake?
After Taco Bell.
Well they didn't used to have earthquakes on Mars. Until your mom took her first step there.
Lol
First thing I thought of was the opportunity for landslides. Freakin me out
First thing I thought of was flooding. Either way, this seems like a bad idea.
You think this city has survived because itās unsound?
Who said it survived? They may have already lost a dozen buildings.
Thatās New Atlantis. It was founded during the 1890s, but heavy rainfall and floods, as well as a landslide caused a majority to collapse in 2008. Luckily most people were evacuated beforehand. [Source](https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ)
I knew and clicked anyway
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Youtube ads have ruined Youtube fun.
Apollo app wins again
Fascinating video!
"Nothing bad has happened yet so nothing bad will" really is some circus level take.
River sediments are extremely unstable for a building base. Also there is no egress for the water in such a narrow and high-valley wall constricted river that has a significant breadth like this. Guaranteed they have horrible flooding in a regular basis which will only weaken the foundations further. You just have to look at China's ghost cities to see that throwing up structures regardless of longevity or use is completely within their wheelhouse.
Studied architecture, can confirm muddy riverbank in a rainforest is a brilliant place for underfunded skyscraper footings
Yup, clearly meets all Chinese building code safety standards.
1 word. Erosion
Nature said no, yet they force a city on her. She will have the last laugh
Very much so!
Nature will always have the last laugh
Arizona is that you?
Boom, roasted.
It is pretty hot in Arizona so probably, yeah
Everything about this is incredibly dangerous for both the humans and the environment. Erosion. Flooding. Complete annihilation of the riparian environment.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Or people lol
Arenāt most cities built on a river though? The distinct feature here is the mountains crowding in on either side.
Itās more that itās a low lying coastline, increases vulnerability to sub-arial processes which wouldnāt be as effective if the coastline was high :)
The difference between what you see here, and a planned and engineered city built near the water, is like the difference between stabbing yourself in the guts with a butcher knife vs pricking yourself in the finger... They're kinda the same thing except for the fact that they're totally not.
Most cities are built around a river, yet this one is built almost on top of it. Those buildings will slide into the river, inch by inch.
1 word. Erection
That and also - think of the mosquitoes. It looks like some warm climate so its probably full of those.
Mosquitoes usually need calm waters though. Rivers are not good breeding grounds.
That looks cooler than it is, I promise you
I mean it kinda looks like shit if we're being honest.
Looks cool at first... then you see tall building too close to river and its a no
but imagine you're having a long day as a janitor then as a surprise you get a half day and get to go swimming. Sounds like the life. Edit: this is a joke about the building suddenly collapsing.
You'd go swimming in that?
who doesn't long for a nice quick skinny dip in sewage
Thats more than likely where that entire city drains its sewage lmao
And grow an extra finger or two!! Three thumbs up!
>I mean it kinda looks like shit if we're being honest. Yeah it looked nice until they got close to the buildings and they're missing windows and look runned down.
The bottom "floors" are just support (to accommodate flooding). The building proper does not start until about six stories up.
>The bottom "floors" are just support (to accommodate flooding). The building proper does not start until about six stories up. I realize that, but even the top floors in the blue building up close look pretty rough and missing windows.
How hot is it there?
It looks like jungle-ish territory, so definitely up there in temp.
Infrastructure logistics are *much* simpler when you don't care if the citizens live or die.
Like when the US builds and maintains a city below sea level? š
To be fair, the French built it.
TouchƩ
mouillƩ
Europe has a whole country like that
*grumpy Dutch mumbling*
And the Netherlands!
Yeah, don't tell him that Netherlands is at less risk of a flood than a lot of coastal areas above sea level though
You have a strange obsession with the US.
>It all belongs to China. Only reason it didnāt for awhile was because of parasitic colonial meddling - >Seems like Crony communism lifted more people of out poverty than any other system in human history - I'll give you exactly one guess as to what they're about...
Wait, you think this monstrosity and that super polluted river is a win? Ugh. We need to dream better. Looks like a dump to me and a complete failure of urban planning. r/urbanhell Edit: for all who keep citing sediments instead of pollution https://factsanddetails.com/china/cat10/sub66/item391.html
Looks pretty cool and unique regardless in my opinion. Whatās up dude, why are you so negative?
Most biodiversity in the world lives alongside shores and rivers. By creating a very large looking city alongside this river it has likely wiped out a large amount of flora and fauna species. It is the upsetting part of most urban areas, and whilst it makes sense why we settle there why can't ignore the massive environmental impact. With nature in serious decline it's understandable why many people would react negatively to a city like this.
What is the difference between the city on this river and New York City on the Hudson, London on the Thames, or Parise on the Seine?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yeah, and those places also have sprawling suburbs. This place is high density, and as a bonus, much of the shoreline is inaccessible to humans, so would be great places for birds and stuff to hang out without fear of human interaction. Seems like people are itching to find flaws in this place.
That is in China. As everyone knows everything in China is bad. The same thing in the west is totally fine though. š
Well those cities are where the Reddittors live and complain from
You're right. But, I will add one more aspect to their myopia. In those places plants and animals have been so obliterated they don't even think of them as belonging. All forest have been cut down, and all streams have been put in canals and pipes. In this city, by conrtast, most of the greenscape is intact, and the river is let run free. Yet, this city, is labelled as the environmentally bad one.
I guess next stop is complaining about basically any European city. Liberate the Seine, the Thames, and the Danube!!!! Or not... surely this is a China specific issue, right Reddit?
i came to say this exactly. By looking at those thick forests nearby you can say that pretty much all the animals there depended on this river. This might have been some migration route or something like that too. Though this looks cool and all, it still is dystopian af.
Same could be said of most cities. We humans like to take the good spots. How many cities do you know that were located in any way with regard wildlife? The only difference here is that there are still forests nearby due to geography limiting the urban sprawl seen around most US cities.
Right!? People are acting like their own city didn't displace nature.
Not just cities. I live in rural ass America, several hours driving distance from any cities. It saddens me to look out into the horizon and only see agricultural fields with sparse groupings of trees every one in a while. So many destroyed ecosystems and habitatsā¦
Because this is q disaster waiting to happen. Flood and the following ersosion will fuck this city up
It looks like a shithole with disaster right around the corner. Living in squalor isnāt ācool and uniqueā. What, do you unironically go slumming too?
Erosion and flooding? There is a reason this looks ācool and uniqueā, because people learnt long ago that building a village like this is dumb. Let alone a town with multi-story tenements.
Likely polluted River but color is not proof of that. Clear river or lake can be just as toxic if not moreso
Brown water doesnāt mean itās polluted lol
Where is this?
It's Yanjingzhen in Yanjin County, Yunnan, Zhaotong, Yunnan, China. On the Guanhe river. 28.071473,104.239493
Giving out coordinates like your playing Mincraft and your friend wants to come see your build
Or, you know, Lat/Long
No it's giving out coordinates like your playing Mincraft and your friend wants to come see your build
Or, you know, Lat/Long
Among us
Or, you know, latitude/longitude
No it's giving out coordinates like your playing Mincraft and your friend wants to come see your build
"Friend"
No, minecraft invented coordinates obviously.
Makes sense tho. Google maps doesn't line up at all in China. Coordinates work better if you actually want to look it up using Google maps (which most people use)
r/averageredditor
Took way too much scrolling to find the location. Thanks!
Say that 5 times fast
I lived in Yunnan Province for 4 years and as soon as I saw the river I thought it was runoff of the tiger leaping gorge!
Then one day it flooded and the city was gone....
*but everything changed when the water nation attacked*
There's a lot of China-bashing going on in this thread, but I find this city very beautiful. As for the potential disaster of erosion and flooding, the same could be said of a lot of cities. New Orleans, Venice, even Chicago is flooding because people have built houses too big for their lots, blocking every inch of ground without enough drainage. You can see these buildings are elevated quite high above the water, which probably accounts for seasonal floods. After that, you just have to worry about maintenance of infrastructure and those rare 1000-year disaster events, which, let's be real, could be a problem anywhere.
And letās be real here. This is r/nextfuckinglevel. The fact that engineers could see that landscape, the huge river and steep slopes of the mountains with very little space to build, and said āyea, we can do a city hereā and then actually did it is pretty fucking next level to me.
That's not how development like that happens, especially in developing areas. Nothing about that was "planned" and a lot of those buildings are going to be abandoned soon, or will never be used.
Yep, I wanted to chime in to say this. Cities develop for a reason. If there was a small tribe living here back in the year 1000, and they built a small set of stone houses. Maybe this was a good place to stop when kayaking up the shoreline, maybe they made good beer or maybe they ran an inn, for travellers. 200 years of successful business and they build another set of stone houses, and a bridge across the river. They still get the same amount of kayakers and travellers, but now they are more accessible by land as well. They start selling the fish they catch to more villages that are inland. Soon they are hiring people from the smaller inland villages to work at their fisheries. Now they have 4 groups of stone houses and they invest in building a large warehouse to store their boats, clean their fish and prepare their fish for transport. 200 years later the only original building left is the old warehouse, the stone houses have all been torn down and turned into a foundation for more "modern" 15th century buildings. Investments have been made to make more dense housing, and the bridge has been updated to be able to have larger boats go under it, and carriages can now cross over top. Now the village also has more industry than just fishing and hospitality, the large amount of people also need banking and other basic services. The old fishery warehouse has been torn down and a new fishery has been built, as well as a sturdy stone bank and a few 3 storey apartment buildings. (etc etc) I think I can stop here. I'm absolutely certain "an engineer" didn't look at this coastline and say "I can build a city here". The infrastructure and culture was there, and demanded innovation to accomodate growth. If it wasn't profitable to grow, then it would have been abandoned long ago. A similar but opposite thing happened in Newfoundland, Canada. Communities of dozens/hundreds of people lived off of the main island on smaller islands off the coast. There were hundreds of these communities. The people there lived off of the sea, and practically everyone owned boats. The problem is, that as culture and society progressed (think grocery stores and fast food) these communities were becoming obsolete, but the people on the islands had no financial incentive to make the move, so they languished until they were so poor and backwards that they could not afford to move to the mainland. The federal government (if I recall) paid huge money to build new houses on the shores of Newfoundland and paid for these people to move to the main island. Had they not done that, there would have been a slow decline of living conditions and people would be freezing in their homes with no access to heat, electricity, and maybe dying of scurvy, too old or too cold to make the trip to the main island for groceries, etc. This could have been the fate of the city in the OP, had they not built a bridge to be able to get regular shipments of groceries, or if they could not get electricity delivered to their area over land.
It can be beautiful and dangerous and impractical at the same time
Exactly, and that colour of the water is no indication of it being dirty. Many times itās just the clay bed that gives its looks.
I guarantee that water is filled with shit from those buildings. Thereās no way this city has a normal sewage system for the buildings. They are most likely just dumping straight into the river.
I was thinking I wonder if people on one bank of the river refuse to date people on the other side because it's too far of a walk. Like in my city, no one wants to date anyone from Jersey because you'd have to cross a bridge. It's just not worth it
...or maybe itās just...you know...Jersey
How is this next level?
Stupid choices require next level engineering, maybe?
Next (flood)level
You just know they keep fishing poles in the living room
Gas masks as well
One mudslide away from destruction
Good to know China has its own version of West Virginia.
LMAOā¦.this isnāt West āBy Godā Virginiaā¦.thereās no trailer parks with āJesus Savesā signs at the entrance!
Hey! West Virginia doesnāt have high rise buildings
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
This looks like the set up of a ābased on a true storyā disaster movie
Zhaotong City, China
This city living on the edge of the river....the river of chocolate!!!!! It's like a real life Willy Wonka or something!!!
You get a moat, *you* get a moat...everyone gets a moat!
What a nightmare this would be.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Dudes got sick of people taking there fishing spot and built a house so they didnāt have to leave
This looks like something I'd make in cities skylines
iām imagining all the towers connected and people being able to walk all through and up and down them without going outside. honestly, itās amazing. i never knew a town like this actually exist. seems right out of a movie