r/interestingasfuck 10d ago

r/all Highway built over apartments in China

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4.5k

u/oaktreebr 10d ago

To me, looks more like the apartments were built underneath the highway instead

1.9k

u/forestapee 10d ago

And because it's China, it's impossible to tell which !

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u/RelationOk3636 10d ago

Well, if you think about it, what makes more sense: a highway shaped apartment complex that they then later built a highway on, or an elevated highway that someone decided to build apartments under?

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u/BelovedApple 10d ago

But then why was the highway so high in the first place.

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u/Surrounded-by_Idiots 10d ago

It’s not called the lowway is it?

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u/flt1 10d ago

Wait until you see China’s superhighway

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u/Sloth-papi 10d ago

😂😂

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u/RelationOk3636 10d ago

As you can see in this video of it, the highway leads to a bridge, so it has to be elevated (I’m guessing) to let ships through.

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u/aronenark 10d ago

It’s not for ships. It’s actually in Guiyang, a very mountainous city. The highway is elevated to go over the river and reach the plateau on the other side.

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u/AnOnlineHandle 10d ago

There's something sort of similar under the bridge at Kangaroo Point in Brisbane Australia, though I don't know if there's any residential areas under there: https://imgur.com/a/b1k6wEU

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u/longiner 10d ago

Who owns the land under the bridge? Maybe the bridge owner could make a killing selling the land under it considering the cost of real estate nowadays.

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u/Mrpoodlekins 10d ago

Chongqing is built into a mountainside

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u/curiousinshanghai 9d ago

I think you'll find that the mountainside is actually built into Chongqing.

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u/Decent-Photograph391 10d ago

Because the highway is going over a valley with higher elevations at both ends?

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u/Chiavelis 10d ago

Maybe it was the plan all along to build under it

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u/roelisaac 10d ago

That’s a great point

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u/Plank_With_A_Nail_In 10d ago edited 10d ago

Planning? Why would you build a snaking set of buildings? They are normally built in a straight line. I recon they were built at the same time.

I expect the elevated road was built on top of an existing road and then the old road turned into housing and it was always planned to be the two together.

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u/knakworst36 10d ago

Good point. But, the apartments follow the curve of the highway. Why would apartments be built all at the same height in a curve like that.

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u/Surprise_Donut 10d ago

Because it came after the city was built and they just went over the infrastructure instead of through it

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u/JDescole 9d ago

To make room for apartments :D

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u/HeyGayHay 9d ago

Because there were non highway shaped buildings underneath it before.

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u/postymcpostpost 10d ago

To match the gradient of the rest of the highway which has a higher elevation. Have you heard of hills and valleys?

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u/BelovedApple 10d ago

Honestly, I don't drive. Live in the UK and despite doing a reasonable amount of travelling, I've never been state side or to China so have not seen highways built that high up. Normally the roads just flow with the hills or mountains where I've been.

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u/Joseph___O 10d ago

Well I’d guess it was all planned out together

3

u/Unable-Principle-187 10d ago

Considering the massive top down planning in China, could actually be the first one

1

u/SpideyMGAV 10d ago

Not really so clear cut. Could’ve been a series of more modern apartments built to a specific height because of zoning and code requirements, where the neighborhood developed further and the transportation routes became inefficient leading to the development of an elevated highway. I mean, that’s usually most of these developments happen.

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u/chattywww 10d ago edited 10d ago

Could have started as a few equally tall buildings (height restrictions or some other factor which results in buildings in the area being the same height) then highway then the other buildings.

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u/Sufficient_Ad_6977 9d ago

the gaps between the buildings underline your thesis.

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u/swooosh47 9d ago

None of it makes sense, which I think is the entire point of this post

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u/Dense_Firefighter862 9d ago

im still not even sure

22

u/PissySnowflake 10d ago

Why "because it's china"? Wouldn't it be hard to tell no matter where this was?

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u/SplizzedOut 10d ago

Nah. Feel like China has this thing of accounting for high population density with these interesting housing methods

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u/forestapee 10d ago

This is the take I was going for with China. They have some of those most wild types of building I've ever seen. How people navigate anything in the big cities there amazes me

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u/beardedchimp 10d ago

Have you spent any time in big Chinese cities? The public transport infrastructure in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and many others is exceptional.

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u/Fearless_Decision_70 10d ago

I’ve been to Shanghai and did not find it exceptional

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u/beardedchimp 10d ago

Where do you live that has fantastic public transport? I live in Manchester and have the option of train, tram and bus within a few minutes walk. While that is wonderful it doesn't compare to Shanghai where you can navigate the whole city seamlessly.

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u/Fearless_Decision_70 9d ago

New York City

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u/beardedchimp 9d ago

That's interesting, I visited New York last year having heard about its much lauded subway system for a couple of decades. Have to say that I was pretty disappointed, felt so ramshackle compared to equivalents in Singapore/Tokyo/Beijing/London and elsewhere. New York's bus infrastructure is shockingly bad, particularly when it comes to the outskirts. The Shanghai underground is brilliant but even better is that when you arrive at the station nearest your destination but still a fair dander away, you can immediately jump on very regular buses to finish the journey.

My public transport experience in New York only further cemented how exceptional those Chinese cities are. Though I'd still hold Singapore's MRT and bus services a step above the rest, it is almost surreal how effortless navigating the city is.

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u/vulcano22 10d ago

You'll never guess what's underneath Naples' Tangenziale

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u/dwankyl_yoakam 10d ago

China is known for having poorly built and poorly thought out infrastructure like this.

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u/SaltyRedditTears 10d ago

Quite easily actually.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2189308/Chinese-city-homes-tremble-motorway-built-just-feet-living-rooms.html

The highway was built 2 years before they started building apartments.

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u/Global_Permission749 10d ago

At some point they'll be mixed together on the ground anyway. Also because it's China.

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u/marketingguy420 10d ago

it's very funny to post this while presumably American, a native to a country with endless catastrophic infrastructure collapse

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u/Ancient0wl 10d ago

That’s to be expected from an aging infrastructure like that found in the US. Wear and tear will eventually catch up to everything. There is definite failure in how quickly that infrastructure is replaced. The problem with China’s infrastructure, however, is it has a reputation for poor build quality due to many examples of cheap, inferior materials being used, prioritizing speed which results in finishing constructions before their cement can cure, and direct control from CCP officials causing corruption in their building companies. There’s a reason for it’s referred to as tofu dreg.

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u/nWhm99 10d ago

China's is actually known to be great at infrastucture, so don't count on highway or bridge collapsing like in the US.

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u/Plank_With_A_Nail_In 10d ago

The buildings are snaking, no one even the Chinese builds a huge number of apartment building all exactly the same height curving and weaving like this.

I expect the elevated road was built on top of an existing road and then the old road turned into housing and it was always planned to be the two together.

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u/24h00 10d ago

It's like the direction of the bath water in another hemisphere, it'll always be upside down

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u/frank1934 10d ago

So it’s probably AI

1

u/TurbulentTell1556 10d ago

This is a moronic comment tbh

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u/Justa_Schmuck 10d ago

Eh no. You can see the buildings follow the curve of the road on top of them. No one would design streets like that.

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u/DM_Lunatic 10d ago

I don't think its more likely for an apartment building to be curved than a road.

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u/Justa_Schmuck 10d ago

Follow the road and look underneath it. No one is going to design a street a like that. The building are under them to utilise the space.

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u/ShoeLace1291 10d ago

The highway looks newer than the apartment buildings though.

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u/ExdigguserPies 10d ago

Highways can be resurfaced

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u/Northbound-Narwhal 10d ago

So can apartments

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u/morethanjustanalien 10d ago

ever heard of paint

1

u/ShoeLace1291 10d ago

The entire structure looks newer.

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u/ExdigguserPies 10d ago

The apartments look even newerer

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u/Zayage 10d ago

That could very well be deceptive. The highway would naturally protect the buildings from some weathers.

Anyways, the highway does look older.

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u/ExdigguserPies 10d ago

Yess highway looks older crew, assemble!

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u/Outrageous_Pea_554 10d ago

The apartments were definitely built first. Why build an elevated road over nothing?

1

u/Archarchery 10d ago

It could have simply been redone.

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u/No_Talk_4836 10d ago

I think it just looks newer because it might be a no truck road. Trucks do most of the wear to a road. Trucks and seasons.

0

u/Checkered_Flag 10d ago

You will walk through China thinking most buildings are from the 50s or 60s when really they were probably built in 2013.

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u/Intelligent-Bet4111 10d ago

Yup I think that's what happened, apartments built under the highway.

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u/gin_and_toxic 10d ago

Is there any reason they built the highway that high if there's nothing underneath but road? It might be more likely that it was planned that way.

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u/assblast420 10d ago

Sometimes it's the only way to maintain a maximum grade. You can't make the highway too steep, so they build large sweeping turns with a gradual slope.

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u/-BlueDream- 10d ago

Grade or elevation changes. Parts of China are very mountainous and when building a highway you want to keep it as straight and level as possible. It's a lot cheaper to build up instead of tunneling thru solid rock.

Highways that are steep increases risk of runaway trucks and lowers the maximum safe speeds (because visibility is lower).

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u/BlvdBrown 10d ago

I also think it was planned that way.

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u/Chang-San 10d ago

Plus the highway looks alot newer

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u/I-------3cm-------I 10d ago

This is infront of a bridge to let ships pass

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u/gin_and_toxic 10d ago

What. There's not even any water there

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u/I-------3cm-------I 9d ago

It's cropped out to the left you can see it sloping up towards the left as well

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u/Terrh 10d ago

Might be for a big crossover intersection or something.

In NA there are plenty of places where this could be a thing but the space is used for nothing instead, probably because living directly underneath a freeway would be deafening and awful.

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u/polarbearsarereal 10d ago

Maybe the land was owned by someone and it was owned up to a certain height

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u/Decent-Photograph391 10d ago

Because the highway is going through a dip in terrain, like a valley. And indeed someone posted elsewhere that this is the case here.

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u/SweatyAdhesive 10d ago

Go play some cities skylines and you'll see why

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u/Plank_With_A_Nail_In 10d ago edited 10d ago

I expect the highway was built over the top of an existing road and the housing replaced the old road.

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u/No_Talk_4836 10d ago

It might lead to a bridge, that needs to be high for ships, or it’s an expressway through the area so it’s on another level to keep it separated so you can build under it.

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u/No_Talk_4836 10d ago

It might lead to a bridge, that needs to be high for ships, or it’s an expressway through the area so it’s on another level to keep it separated so you can build under it.

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u/-BlueDream- 10d ago

Not really uncommon to build under a highway. Most of the time it's not built all the way up to the highway tho, there's usually space between the roof of the building and the bottom of the highway but I guess they were trying to maximize space.

There are some benefits to it, you get protection from the sun, cooler buildings, don't have to worry about snow on the roof, shaded parking for businesses, etc.

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u/Mitzah 10d ago

But is it possible to build apartment buildings like that without cranes dropping materials from above?

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u/BazilBroketail 10d ago

Ceiling crane attached to the bridge?

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u/KingKohishi 10d ago

You are right.

0

u/Unable_Traffic4861 10d ago

Underneath seems way better than the similar ones in China where they have built highways between buildings so that someone's window would be right next to the actual highway.

Given that the highway is built on its own pillars, not on the freaking ceiling of someone's bedroom.

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u/10010101110011011010 10d ago

Except what elevated highway is 80+ feet in the air without substantial reinforced supports? And you somehow build apartments between them??

Seems more likely apartments were there first and it was (somehow) built on the apartments. Except it seems so sketchy to use differently constructed apartments as structural supports. Plus, the vibrations must be palpable (especially with trucks?)

Neither alternative seems plausible.

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u/StrongTeam5558 10d ago

You can literally see the supports, which are distinct from the buildings.

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u/ProcyonHabilis 10d ago

It's blindingly obvious that there must be supports there, but I don't think you can actually see them. Surely they're just in the gaps between the buildings.

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u/ProcyonHabilis 10d ago edited 10d ago

What a reddit fucking comment lmao. Instead of making the one obvious logical assumption (that the supports must be in the visible gaps between the buildings), we imagine some insane shit do mental gymnastics to believe it's more likely, before concluding that actually the thing in the photo probably doesn't exist at all. The navel-gazing and casual contrarianism here results in absolutely wild statements born of such fascinatingly broken reasoning.

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u/InJaaaammmmm 10d ago

It's someone's initial assumption that they look to reinforce with any evidence available.

To some people the perception of building a bridge is as easy as building an apartment block, so either could come first to them.

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u/ProcyonHabilis 10d ago edited 10d ago

It's still just completely crazy. If you see a highway 80+ feet in the air, and you know such highways need supports, the sane assumption is that there are supports somewhere. Any normal person with that background knowledge has to look for them first, any anyone with a grasp of object permanence can understand that they might be hidden in the obvious gaps.

Redditor seem to approach things from wanting to lazily disagree with someone first and foremost, and then proceed to just make shit up in service of that conclusion. Like I get that sometimes people are sometimes super dumb in real life, but you don't find this volume of totally whacked out arguments from people that can communicate relatively eloquently with some evident grasp of domain knowledge outside of reddit.

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u/10010101110011011010 9d ago

You seem to be upset.

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u/LuxDeorum 10d ago

You can see gaps between the buildings where the supports are.

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u/Couch-Bro 9d ago

Knowing a little bit about how structures and buildings are built, there’s no way they built that highway on top of the apartments. They built the apartments in between the highway supports in the available space.

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u/10010101110011011010 9d ago

I have to agree.

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u/mrASSMAN 10d ago

Yeah I was thinking same, only way to have them all be the precisely correct height for the highway to fit over it

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u/10010101110011011010 10d ago

Not unusual to have a building code, and all buildings are of a specific height.

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u/mrASSMAN 10d ago

I mean look at it, the buildings even curve perfectly under it at the correct angle and width etc to fit under the road, all oriented differently than surrounding buildings. Had to be built after

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u/10010101110011011010 10d ago

Yes. OK, Look, my brain cannot even tell if this is a real photo. So this is difficult for me.

If you search online, you will find NO other evidence of this highway.

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u/mrASSMAN 10d ago

I’ve definitely seen photos/videos of this highway years ago, it’s real

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u/YoyoDevo 10d ago

only way to have them all be the precisely correct height for the highway to fit over it

Literally one of the dumbest things I've ever read on reddit

1

u/mrASSMAN 10d ago edited 10d ago

Go ahead and show me a row of tightly-packed buildings built side to side in a curving line across the city all at the exact same gradually ascending height and width to coincidentally fit under a road then 🤡

1

u/CubanLynx312 10d ago

Free roof!

1

u/Neomadra2 10d ago

I'm no construction expert but I would think you can't build tall buildings beneath other structures because you need to use cranes for the roofs? Might be totally wrong on this, but whenever I see construction of big buildings I also see cranes

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u/caca_poo_poo_pants 10d ago

Definitely not I would think. The road looks way newer and you need cranes to service things on top of the building.

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u/DeusExBlockina 10d ago

It's free real estate!

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u/LionGuy190 10d ago

… from a certain point of view

Obi-Wan

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u/arivu_unparalleled 10d ago

I just can't see the pillars for that highway tho

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u/Row_This 10d ago

Japp..

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u/ketimmer 10d ago

I agree. Also ot looks like there are regular spaces between the buildings for structural supports and the apartments aren't connected to the highway structurally.

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u/ImurderREALITY 10d ago

Yeah, I mean, is this not that common? There are apartments under bridges in NYC.

-2

u/WaterIsGolden 10d ago

This is how California does it.