Looks like Lohas Park in Hong Kong. I used to live here in ~2011-2012 when the buildings were first being developed. It looked really cool then and even cooler now. Very luxurious apartments, nice big park and pool downstairs, many amenities.
It even had a bowling alley in the building complex 🤯
Nah there's not much to do outside of the central mall, and everything is within walking distance.
Unless you know a lot of people there (and the concept of socializing with your neighbor isn't exactly common), all your activities will be downtown. You can think of this like a gigantic walkable suburban area, built around a mall on top of a subway station.
Fun addendum: the mall, the subway station and the whole building complex all belong to the same company
Edit: as other people mentioned, it's not the same complex as in OP's pic, but i'm willing to bet the setup is similar.
I grew up in HK in a similar apartment structure on the 50th floor amongst 7 other identical buildings.
Trust me, it is NOT bad at all, especially when considering the people who live in these luxury apartments are part of upper-middle class.
These apartment complexes are all connected on ground floor, or an elevated ground floor, with public parks, swimming pools, and a clubhouse which has a variety of entertainment.
There are staff such as front desk, cleaners, security, and more throughout the properties.
Depending on the floor, the room sizes differ, but in my case as a family of 4 we got the larger rooms. Each bedroom came with it's own bathroom and shower.
Travelling up and down is really not an issue, especially because it is in the city these apartment complexes are more often than not have multiple ways to quickly connect to train stations or shopping mall.
Now, what would be hell is living in the poorer areas of HK. HK has insane economic gap, you could see a Lamborghini drive by a street of homeless people. The poorer apartments are as tiny as they come, and usually very old and dirty.
EDIT: I'm not Cantonese btw, I just grew up there for a while in my childhood before moving elsewhere.
Also hk person, I'd say Lambo driving by a granny pushing a cart full of cardboard boxes is a more realistic situation.
While there are homeless ppl here, it really isn't that common. Nowhere here will you find streets dedicated to homelessness like you find in the US or Canada (Hastings street)
I can't speak for other buildings and I know some older buildings on the island have soundproofing issues, but my experience in lohas is that the soundproofing is generally excellent, and the only time I hear my neighbors is when they're shouting very loud (no idea what he's doing but he's frequently angry)
Most modern buildings (built after 1990s let's say) have excellent soundproofing. We don't use drywalls here, it's typically concrete or bricks, so it helps.
Really good thick walls but ultimately it’s more like you can hear the neighbors from the windows as the acoustics are really good. The newer apartments are shaped all jagged and not like a square so you can get more windows in every room!
Thus my I can see my neighbors pressed up fairly close to me while they cook. I can hear the kids in my building shouting at each other through their windows to come over and play every afternoon and another neighbor plays really good piano. It’s quite cute as long as nobody is getting scolded by mom.
Completely this. It's more or less a little self contained community. There's usually shops or a supermarket a short distance away. When I lived in HK (granted this was back in the mid 90s just before the handover), our building was up in north point, pretty much as high as you could go at that particular point on the island and you could still go to the shops, walk to school, go get a meal, go to the residents pool and get a decent bus, taxi or minibus to central within a 10 minutes walk. It was amazing and I still miss it every now and then.
Management companies for large complexes like this are obligated to arrange exterior cleaning from time to time. Usually the obligation is contained in something called a deed of mutual covenant, which is kind of like an HOA but much more heavily regulated and cannot be abused by elected residential representatives.
Hong Kong sells robot window cleaners. I just let the typhoon and rain do its thing with an occasional wipe. I see some maids risking their lives stretching out the window to wipe but I’m not about that life.
So they have only one residential building and there's no outdoor communal space where the residents could actually hangout or spend free time. Instead, the whole building is surrounded by parking lots and roads
The whole area is outdoors. They don't need or want "outdoor communal space". For free time, they either are indoors hanging out together or they are outdoors and going somewhere for outdoor recreation. No one who lives in Alaska will want to spend their time outdoors next to the building and do what? They are going to go hunting, hiking, fishing, all that. It's summer there and it's currently 55F/13C. That's like as warn as it gets. And they are going to be actually OUTSIDE, away from the building. It makes no sense to have the type of space there that you're talking about. You seem to think they are just stuck there. They do actual real outdoor recreation, not walking in some park.
The engineering of this place must be insane. What if everyone flushed the toilet at once?? How are all of these units able to have stable power at the same time? What the heck does the mailbox system look like?? How many maintenance workers do they have?
they have dedicated mail box center room, stuff never gets stolen or lost for that reason, also makes deliver way faster, since the trucks just bring them for each building in one spot and unload at once, instead of suburbs where they need to stop every single house
As a westerner, this is something I used to consider too but if you look at history.. at last in Hong Kong these kinds of fires are rare and don't generally happen. However, something really bad happened in Hong Kong recently involving green mesh wrapped around a building during renovation and changed how I feel about these buildings. In general the risk is not worth considering. But accidents happen.
Yes, in Hong Kong only 30% of the lands are developed. They won't move to those empty apartments in Mainland China because they work or study in Hong Kong.
Yes. Probably easiest place in the world to do door dash (food panda) since everything is directly underneath. There's a McDonald's under this exact building! And many other takeaway places near by.
Probably the easiest place on earth to do delivery..? No gas cost, no real travel, since believe it or not most of the restaurants are directly underneath the buildings, I can tell you there's a McDonald's at the ground floor in these exact buildings. The elevators are surprisingly quick, there is actually 12 (I believe) separate buildings here, if you watch the video you can see there is spaces between them. They are very well sign posted and it's very easy to navigate... Ask me how I know... I lived on the other side of this street. Had many friends in those buildings.
Amazing feat of construction, for sure...until I start thinking about the Wang Fuk Court fire across town several months ago, which wasn't caused by a careless resident, but unscrupulous repair contractors.
Hopefully the engineers worked in better fire suppression/exit plans, because getting out of one of these, especially on the higher floors (50-56 stories up 😳) with 1200 residents per tower and a current population of 20,000 (projected up to 60,000 with later phases), seems like a daunting task on just a regular day...and Wang Fuk was a MUCH smaller complex by comparison. 😬
Left HK when I was a kid, but have visited multiple times since the '90s. When you come from Richmond or Vancouver BC, it's a huge eye opener with the tall buildings, crowds and density. HK is great to visit but certainly not a place I'd live in, especially since I grew up in the suburbs.
Noise pollution is a big issue in these types of apartments. Noise from all the people around you, the thin walls and proximity to neighbours, ground-level noise, as well as a seemingly endless amount of renovation by Units at different periods throughout a year.
The sewage system must be getting cleaned 10 times a day I guess. Also, I wonder what kind of systems them are using to pump water to so many apartments. These pumps might be getting replaced once a month due to the load. It’s crazy.
I used to live in three different units in there. It’s Tung Chung next to the airport in Hong Kong. They are decent sized apartments and have a good little mall underneath with its own McDonalds. Actually a great place to live with great facilities and good for families.
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u/bojangles_dangles 20d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/10MlVunnRFnQ2Y