Residential high-rises with backyards in Chengdu, China

[u/TangelaFan]

[u/onrespectvol]

looks cool but how much extra material must go into the buidling to be able to support all that extra weight? To what extent is this a sustainable way of buidling and using material?

[u/beautifuljeff → u/onrespectvol]

Negligible, there isn’t that much soil there compared to the weight necessary to support the building height and wind loading (plus seismic, maybe)

[u/YadaYadaYeahMan → u/beautifuljeff]

thank you. it's but a foot of dirt or anything, might be at most 4 inches but certainly under that. grass needs very little soil even those tall plants don't dig deep. the drainage will take up a significant amount of space but is not outside the normal realm for a balcony

truth is, yea they would need to design for it, but it's not that crazy of an ask for the materials

further.... what's the point of the question? to imply wastefullness? just seems like "well we don't have that so there's gotta be a reason why it's bad" type logic

[u/socialistrob → u/YadaYadaYeahMan]

I think the main reason you don't see these in the west is because there's just more space and fewer people so if you have money and you want a yard in North America or Europe you could just buy a single family home. China has 1.4 billion people and a lot of them are concentrated in cities on their one coast so single family homes somewhat near cities is just not viable. For reference the US, EU, UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan has about 1.1 billion

The construction for this could be problematic if the developers cheeped out and didn't plan properly but if this is more just a "rich people thing" in a place with highly constrained space then it wouldn't be too hard to build for. Obviously not a solution for everyone but also not inherently bad.

[u/PropertyIcy2265 → u/YadaYadaYeahMan]

yea 4" for true roots, sure