12: Suburbs/Metro

I recently learned an interesting thing about Beijing that I wanted to share with my readers. Apparently, people in Beijing think that living in the city is much safer than living in the suburbs, and that moving from the suburbs to the city is seen as an increase in status. This was intriguing for me, especially coming from a culture where living in the city is seen as dangerous and scary, and moving to the suburbs is seen as a way to move up the social ladder.

Suburbs started in America as a reactionary response to more and more black people moving into the cities. White people started moving out of the city in droves, in a phenomenon known as White Flight. The American Dream was modified into a cute little house with a white picket fence and a car and a good housewife. However, in Beijing, cost of living in the city is so expensive, that if migrants from rural China want to live there, they are forced out into the suburbs. For the most part, the city has neglected the suburbs (especially in the years since the Olympics, where they shifted their focus inwards for tourism), and the area has now gained a stigma.

Also, if you study the public transportation systems of America, you’ll notice that the intention of the metro systems are to bring people from their living areas in the suburbs to the center of the city and back out. This is especially true in the Chicago Metra, the DC Metro, and the Boston T. In Beijing, the metro is actually designed to shuttle people around the city, as opposed to in and out of the city. The busiest part of the metro is in the middle parts of the line, where the city is. Perhaps this isn’t that interesting to you, but it blows my mind!