Cowboy Caleb the liberal arts, grown-up stuff & random mischief

New Beijing Airport Exemplifies Why China Will Crush The Competition

New Beijing Airport Exemplifies Why China Will Crush The Competition (via)
The Beijing terminal cost $3.65 billion to build, which in China bought a structure bigger than all five terminals at Heathrow put together, for less than half the cost of the new Terminal 5. The project was conceived, designed, constructed, and opened in four years, whereas the Heathrow terminal, from conception to completion, took twenty years. (That building, by Richard Rogers, is a somewhat compromised version of his original design—far better than the rest of Heathrow, but much less interesting than Rogers meant it to be.) These widely divergent timetables are not a matter of Chinese efficiency versus British dallying: the British, like the Americans, pay the price of democracy. The Chinese government does not have to contend with environmentalists, financing problems, or recalcitrant airlines; the public hearings over the Heathrow terminal took the same amount of time as the entire construction of the Beijing one. China simply decrees what it will build, and floods the construction zone with migrant workers whose daily pay probably wouldn’t buy a British construction worker’s lunch.

You might be interested to know that the new Beijing Capital International Airport is currently the biggest airport in the world.

Read more here.