2017 Year in Review: Beijing's Changing Urban Landscape and a Few Predictions for the Coming Year

2017 was a year of change for Beijing, but then again what year since 1421 hasn’t been a year of change for the city?

Even so, China’s capital looks very different than it did this time last year. As sad as it was to lose Más, Cellar Door, El Nido, the original Slow Boat Taproom, and other well-known and beloved watering holes and other foreigner-friendly businesses, the ever-widening project to transform the city into a Potemkin Peking took a tragic turn at the end of the year. Thousands of economic migrants – and not a few foreign residents – were affected by the city-wide demolition of “non-standard” housing. The city took a public relations hit for evicting folks just as the weather turned colder, but workers continue to raze structures across Beijing.

In September, as the summer of the Great Brickening was winding down, I wrote:

2017 was Phase One. Phase Two will be even more painful because the low-hanging fruit has been plucked and smashed. Expect “fire inspections” and “zoning checks” to start affecting existing (and in some cases long-standing) structures inside hutong blocks and courtyards. If you’re renting the gorgeous, remodeled duplex of your dreams in a hutong east of Gulou, best check with your landlord to make absolutely sure that his sublet is legal and the structure (including all floors, doors, terraces) is 100 percent legal.

Sure enough, this fall, authorities moved against structures not matching “the original construction” of buildings and courtyards throughout Dongcheng and Xicheng. Terraces were toppled, second floors demolished, doors covered, and residents forced – often with very little notice – to relocate.

Transportation options got better … and worse in 2017. Didi Chuxing unveiled an English-language version of its app for the Hanyu-impaired, although it must have cost a fortune to develop because Didi keeps jacking their rates. News that food delivery firm Meituan is getting into the ride-hailing game raises our hopes for more competitive car pricing in 2018 but seeing as the Didi war chest just got a four-billion-dollar boost from investors, I don’t like Meituan’s chances.

Speaking of zipping through the city, it’s amazing how we went from “Hunting on the map to try and find a free bike” to “Hey, there’s a bunch of bikes right by my apartment complex” to “Will somebody do something about all these f**cking bikes?” in about 13 months. [Insert cliché or banal platitude about how China is a dynamic economy with a fast-changing society here. No, really. You go ahead. Why should I have all the fun? For a complete list of suggestions, turn on your VPN and Google “Tom Friedman + China.”]

2017 wasn’t all bad in Beijing, but it wasn’t great either. Either way, let's turn the page. Here a few predictions for the coming year:

1. More buildings will come down and that will suck, but we’ll start to hear visitors (and even a few Beijing residents) taking a shine to some of the newly remodeled bits of Beijing for their wider sidewalks, cleaner storefronts, quieter and more traditional-looking (if you don’t give a flying fig about authenticity that is …) hutong spaces.
2. One of the positive changes will be increasing bans on wheeled vehicles on certain roads and in the hutongs. New policies for hutong drivers were announced this year, those will actually be enforced in 2018 and more areas will be made pedestrian zones.
3. We had a lot of people head for the exits this year (not all of their own volition). This will accelerate in 2018 as new visa policies will close loopholes and surveillance of businesses will make employing people on dodgy visas much more difficult.
4. There will be further crackdowns as economic migrants from other parts of China are told they are no longer welcome in Beijing. The government wants to cap Beijing's population at 23 million. But calling it a "cap" requires us to believe that the city's official population number (21.5 million or so) is accurate when in fact it is likely – once unregistered migrants and others living in the grey areas of urban society are factored in – significantly north of 23 million. 
5. 2018 will be the cleanest air Beijing has seen in decades. Never mind that the rest of North China will be freezing their asses off, Beijingers will enjoy many more blue sky days next year.

Happy Holidays. See you next year.

Photo: citymetric.com