Doesn't this just get you warm n fuzzy inside? The Chinese govt forcing families from their homes, but Nike and Starbucks can have retail shops close to the Olympics. Or is $100 a square foot "compensation"? Many of the locals said they recieved zero.
http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2008/06/16/1580571-despite-promises-old-beijing-neighborhoods-fall In part:
It wasn't supposed to happen this way. Alarmed by the destruction of old Beijing, the city agreed in 2002 to preserve 25 historic areas, including part of Qianmen. That year, the national government pledged in a Beijing Olympics Action Plan to pay "special attention" to conserving buildings in those areas.
But the destruction has continued ? and in some cases accelerated ? amid a property boom that is transforming the city. Developers and the local governments that control land permits stand to profit from the boom, and their interests have prevailed. The Olympics, in the end, fed this trend as the government itself undertook a $40 billion makeover of the city.
Sun Yunyu, 55, recalls playing by the old city walls as a child and swimming with friends in a stream that snaked through the alleyways. The city walls were destroyed in a drive to industrialize the city that began in the late 1950s.
Sun said she was forced out of her house by police and security officers who carted away the lights and furniture as she watched. Now, her former home sits half-demolished behind metal fencing around the construction site, its traditional roof tiles broken and decorated stone doorway boarded up.
"It protects Chinese culture if you can look after your house and hand it down from generation to generation," Sun said. "We've been educating our children like this, but things turned out another way."
The district government made the narrowest interpretation of the 2002 preservation agreement, cherry-picking a few places for preservation and developing the rest, said He Shuzhong, the founder of the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center, an activist group.
Chongwen officials declined comment. Wang Chunlei, a spokeswoman for developer SOHO, said only that conservation was the responsibility of the district government.
Qianmen's main shopping street, along which Olympic marathon runners will pass, is being remade into a pedestrian way more than half a mile long with bright gold street lights in the shape of birdcages. Rolex, Prada,
Starbucks, Nike, Adidas and Apple computer are among the 20 foreign brand names that will take retail space, according to Chinese media reports.
The brands are keen to open before the Aug. 8-24 Olympics, said Benjamin Christensen, head of research at property agency Jones Lang LaSalle, which is involved in the project.
The government said residents could stay if they paid for the cost of refurbishing, but that offer was not made until late last year ? after many had already moved ? and few have taken it up.
Families say they received compensation of about $100 per square foot for the homes they left, and most have moved to Beijing suburbs where properties are cheaper.
? 2008 The Associated Press.
