With China’s economic boom, Shanghai “is on its way to owning the largest urban rail mass-transit system in the world.” Mitchell Lansberg also indicated in his report why China can always clear the barriers in the way when it decides to do something. From Boston.com:
…In China, labor is cheap, the land belongs to the government, air pollution is the primary environmental concern, and political pressure moves largely in one direction – from the Communist Party leadership on down.
“If the government wants to do something, even if the conditions are not ready for it, it will be done,” said Zheng Shiling, a Chinese architect who teaches at Tongji University in Shanghai….[Full Text]
[Image: By 2020, the Shanghai subway system is expected to include 22 lines and hundreds of stations. The system would stretch about 560 miles and serve more than 12 million people a day, via Boston.com]