The Ming Dynasty did not revolutionize

Chapter 394 Turns out there's another plan

Zhu Jianxuan approved the memorial building, the Three Gorges Project, and the Congo River Project, which was considered to be adding several major tasks to the Ming central court.

This will certainly make the relevant officials busier. Zhu Jianxuan knows that he will also become busier because various related approvals and requests will continue to be submitted.

Just two days later, the first related request was delivered to Zhu Jianxuan, and it was submitted by the Minister of Rites.

Zhu Jianxuan had already prepared himself mentally and was continuing to think about these projects in his mind, constantly brewing various special and detailed ideas.

However, this first request was beyond Zhu Jianxuan's expectations, and made him a little unhappy.

Zhu Jianxuan asked the Ministry of Rites to cooperate with the Ministry of Construction to provide advice and support on etiquette and culture during the design of the Merit Memorial Building.

However, at this time, the Ministry of Rites submitted a proposal that had very little substantive relevance, but was indeed related in name.

"While designing and constructing the Meritorious Service Memorial Building, should we formulate new and clear building construction standards based on the urban construction status of various parts of the Ming Dynasty?"

Zhu Jianxuan frowned slightly and took a quick look at the specific contents of the memorial.

As the scale of industrial construction continues to expand, new reinforced concrete technology has begun to be widely used in construction, and the old building regulations have become outdated.

Now ordinary people can only use the employee housing of state-owned factories as the upper limit standard for building their own buildings.

But this is just an unspoken rule, not a clear indicator.

The relevant government offices of the imperial court want to manage and restrain, but they have no appropriate basis and standards, so it is recommended to formulate formal standards.

The words in the memorial were rather euphemistic, but Zhu Jianxuan saw through their true purpose.

“This is in the hope that the court will relax restrictions on the height and number of floors of private buildings.

“Even the previous proposal to build a memorial building for heroes might have been deliberately proposed to bring up the issue of the specifications of civilian buildings.

"Some people in the private sector want to build high-rise buildings.

"It also shows that the private commerce born out of the industrial foundation is becoming more and more developed—"

The current Ming Dynasty has the conditions to build skyscrapers. At least those with 20 or 30 floors can be built at any time, and it should not be too difficult to build taller ones.

With the rapid development of private commerce, there is a demand for more densely populated commercial buildings.

They are mainly purely commercial companies such as finance, securities, law, insurance, consulting, and trade.

These companies have no requirements for production and manufacturing space and environment, but are very sensitive to the speed of information exchange.

They make money by relying on information, connections and money.

The taller the building, the easier it is to gather more people and more information into a smaller area and complete exchanges and processing at a faster speed.

But in the Ming Dynasty, if the height of a house exceeded the standard, it would be considered as an act of usurpation.

If someone builds a high-rise building without permission, and the case is dealt with impartially, it will be more than just losing your head.

The key is that transportation and communications in the Ming Dynasty are too convenient, and tall buildings cannot be hidden at all.

Highways and railways are extensive, telegraphs and telephones have been laid out in towns and villages, and newspapers and radio keep up to date with the latest news across the country.

If a high-rise building is built secretly in one place, the news may spread throughout the country in less than a month.

Before Zhu Jianxuan nodded, the merchants and craftsmen did not dare to do it privately.

Now it is time for a group of more powerful businessmen to step forward and ask officials from the Ministry of Construction and the Ministry of Rites to find a more suitable opportunity and reason to write a letter to test the emperor's attitude.

Zhu Jianxuan is indeed very proud of himself now, and logically he would not refuse to brag about his achievements.

Previously, when the ministers instigated the idea of ​​obtaining an honorific title, Zhu Jianxuan did not directly refuse. He just felt that they were not doing it well, so he did not approve it, and now it has come to nothing.

Zhu Jian would certainly not refuse the imperial court's direct initiative to build a high-rise building specifically for commemoration and publicity.

But the attitude towards private buildings is different.

In his previous life, Zhu Jianxuan had never liked particularly tall buildings.

The key point is that according to the experience of previous lives, if the buildings in the city are too tall, it will cause a lot of trouble.

The first is the issue of disaster relief.

If the buildings are all below six stories, especially low-rise buildings below three stories, it is easy for residents to run away directly when any danger occurs.

Even if the corridor is blocked, with some simple rescue facilities, the trapped people can be quickly evacuated.

If there is a fire in a building, water can be sprayed in with a little force through the pipe.

But for buildings with more than ten floors, twenty floors, or even higher, all related issues cannot be handled simply.

Then there is the issue of the construction and maintenance of the buildings themselves.

The theoretical service life of a reinforced concrete high-rise building is very long. If the construction quality is good and it is properly maintained, there will be no problem using it for a hundred years.

But how to ensure the quality and how to ensure proper maintenance is much more troublesome.

Finally, there is the issue of residents.

It is impossible for a building with dozens of floors to be occupied by only one family, so there will naturally be neighborhood disputes.

It's not about quarreling, occupying public areas, or naughty kids playing basketball or running upstairs. These problems cannot be avoided and will not cause particularly bad effects.

Instead, the renovation downstairs will destroy the load-bearing walls, even dig basements, and illegally add to the rooftop, which will cause all kinds of big problems.

Of course, even with these foreseeable troubles, if we directly ban the construction of high-rise buildings just because of these troubles, it would be a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Zhu Jianxuan has never expressed his opinion on whether to allow private enterprises to build high-rise buildings. The key issue is still to consider the economic issues.

Urban land prices and house prices are highly correlated with floor height.

As the most important asset in the hands of ordinary people, the cost of acquiring a house will directly affect people's disposable income.

Generally speaking, high-rise buildings will raise land prices, and high land prices will in turn raise housing prices.

The increase in housing and land prices will lead to further inflation, causing people's other assets and income to depreciate relative to housing prices, while widening the nominal gap between the rich and the poor.

Use the same materials to build a house of exactly the same size and quality.

The construction cost in small cities, suburbs or even rural areas will not be several times different from that in important areas within a metropolitan area.

However, the final market sales price may differ by more than ten times or even dozens of times.

The net worth of the two people who own these two houses will differ by dozens of times due to the difference in market prices of the two houses.

The extra tens of times are all profits——

These huge profits attracted private manufacturers and even officials from official manufacturers, who instinctively tended to develop construction in big cities.

At the same time, various means are used to promote urbanization and bring more population into cities.

Rapid cities will in turn push up land and housing prices.

This is a cycle that continues to accumulate upwards and will not stop until the whole thing is stuck.

The key is that the industries that have the most urgent demand for high-rise buildings are finance, securities, law, insurance and other industries that deal directly with money. They simply rely on money to make money, but do not directly participate in social production.

According to past experience, they are likely to widen the gap between the rich and the poor, push up inflation, and most importantly, lead to industrial recession.

You can wear decent clothes, sit in a clean and bright office, and just by moving your hands and mouth a little, you can participate in the most profitable industry in the world.

The smart people and talented children in society will instinctively yearn for this kind of life and will not want to work in a factory.

Once the financial industry develops rapidly to a certain stage, industrial recession can no longer be completely avoided.

Zhu Jianxuan has always been committed to controlling inflation and the gap between the rich and the poor. The key is to promote industrial construction and avoid industrial recession.

Therefore, Zhu Jianxuan had already relaxed the restrictions on clothing. Except for the official dress, official uniforms and uniforms of the court, the people could wear whatever they liked.

But there has been no relaxation on building restrictions.

At the same time, according to the experience of Europe and the United States, for ordinary working people, high-rise buildings are only popular during the stage of large-scale industrial development and rapid urbanization.

After urbanization and industrialization are basically completed, people will tend to pursue suburban residences.

In the 1950s and 1960s, after the end of World War II, a large number of high-rise residential buildings were built in major cities and emerging cities in Europe and the United States.

The old photos of construction sites in European and American cities at that time gave people the feeling that they were like photos of Chinese cities with a black and white filter added.

But this type of high-rise building has only been popular for about thirty years.

Building facilities are gradually aging, maintenance costs are high and difficult to maintain, and the composition of residents is becoming more and more complex, causing more and more residents to flee high-rise residential buildings.

The key point is that in the late twentieth century, Europe and the United States began to deindustrialize, and a large number of residential buildings began to be abandoned.

These abandoned residential buildings often become three-dimensional slums, so local governments in Europe and the United States have begun to promote the demolition of these high-rise residential buildings.

After the 21st century, of the large number of high-rise buildings built at that time, only the high-end office buildings in the city center and the relatively high-end apartment buildings remain.

Because the residents of high-end office buildings and high-end apartments are richer and can pay the maintenance costs of the buildings, the buildings can naturally continue to be used.

It became popular for the middle class to buy or build independent houses in the suburbs and bear the maintenance costs themselves.

The social structure of Shenzhou is completely different from that of Europe and the United States. There are no slums in the sense of Europe and the United States, and ordinary high-rise residential buildings should not become three-dimensional slums.

Relatively dense high-rise residential buildings can concentrate a large population and are most suitable for industrial society.

But that is obviously not the most suitable building for ordinary human life. Some people claim that the floor area ratio will directly affect fertility tendencies.

In modern China where industrialization has been basically completed, more and more people hate high-rise residential buildings and begin to yearn for independent houses in the suburbs.

If it were not for the long-standing "villa restriction order", villas would definitely become a common type of high-end commercial housing.

Therefore, Zhu Jianxuan believes that there may always be a relatively large number of mid- and low-end high-rise residential buildings in Shenzhou in the future, but there will also be more and more relatively expensive multi-story residential buildings. After the villa restriction order is lifted, more independent villa residences will appear.

Unless Shenzhou also experiences industrial decline, dense high-rise residential buildings suitable for industrial society will not disappear.

As a time traveler, Zhu Jianxuan naturally tends to lead the people of the Ming Dynasty to skip detours and hopes that housing will jump directly from traditional architecture to post-industrial architecture.

However, the Ming Dynasty also needed to develop and maintain its industrial production capacity to avoid industrial decline.

Then there is no way to jump directly to the post-industrialization stage of Europe and the United States, and we can only skip the stage of large-scale construction of densely packed high-rise buildings.

The current Ming Dynasty society is not exactly the same as Europe, America, and China in the previous life.

The current Ming Dynasty is a society dominated by industry rather than commerce, and its social foundation is state capitalist large-scale industry rather than free capitalism.

Many people will work in a factory for their entire lives, or even for generations.

Most of them live in dormitory buildings built by the factory, which are six-story, 20-meter residential buildings with very similar standards.

Only some managers and senior craftsmen who want to improve their lives will buy more comfortable townhouses and single-family houses outside the dormitories.

If the imperial court had not taken the initiative to promote the transformation, these people would not have thought of buying a room in a ten-story building to live in.

There should be two main sources of the Ming people's desire to build high-rise buildings.

One is the office buildings needed for the development of commercial and financial industries, and the other is the wealthy families who own urban land and a lot of wealth and want to show off their wealth through the height of their buildings.

Neither can be completely tolerated, but neither can be completely banned either.

If used properly, private commerce and finance can also be regarded as the lubricant of industry, which can promote market prosperity and diversification of goods and services.

When people who own land and wealth spend money on building houses, it is also considered consumption in related industries.

So Zhu Jianxuan looked at the request sent by the Ministry of Rites and finally decided to set new and clear standards for them, but this standard would be very strict.

Zhu Jianxuan threw aside the request sent by the Ministry of Rites and directly called the Cabinet Grand Secretary Shen Fu to draft the decree.

Buildings owned by individuals for family residence shall not exceed six floors and twenty meters.

The standards can be relaxed for those who possess honors and titles.

The families of gentry, local scholars, and students had seven floors and were 23 meters long; the families of barons and juren had eight floors and were 26 meters long; the families of viscounts and jinshi had nine floors and were 30 meters long.

The Earl's family has ten floors and is thirty-three meters long, the Marquis's family has eleven floors and is thirty-six meters long, and the Duke's family has twelve floors and is forty meters long.

The Duke's family has 13 floors and 43 meters, while the Prince's family has 15 floors and 50 meters.

Both the number of floors and the height shall not be exceeded.

Existing private housing that exceeds the current standards will be ordered to demolish the excess parts within one year, otherwise it will be treated as an act of overstepping the boundaries.

For government offices at all levels and other official institution buildings, as well as buildings for private commercial purposes, different levels of restrictions are imposed according to the size and level of the city.

The buildings of government agencies at the county level and below, and commercial buildings where government agencies at the county level and below are located, shall not exceed six stories and twenty meters.

Official institution buildings at the state capital level and commercial buildings in the state capital city area shall not exceed nine floors and thirty meters.

Provincial government agencies and commercial buildings in provincial capitals must not exceed twelve stories and forty meters.

In the inner city of Shuntian Prefecture and Yingtian Prefecture, official and commercial buildings must not exceed three stories and ten meters, in the outer city must not exceed six stories and twenty meters, and outside the city must not exceed fifteen stories and sixty meters.

In general, the standards for government office buildings, private residential buildings, and commercial office buildings are all set at less than 15 stories and 50 meters.

For any reason, if one wanted to build a taller building, one had to obtain personal approval from the emperor himself, otherwise it would be considered a crime of usurpation.

At the same time, any manufacturers or individuals engaged in residential housing construction, sales, and leasing related industries are not allowed to sell or lease different floors to different people for residence.

In all private residential buildings, only people from the same family can live on upper and lower floors, and some minor troubles should be avoided.

Even if some crazy person destroys the load-bearing wall, it will not affect other families.

It can also curb the tendency of private enterprises to build high-rise buildings.

Only dormitory buildings that are not sold or rented to the public are exempt from this regulation.

At the same time, restrictions are imposed on private lending and the financial industry. In the future, the amount of funds borrowed by any manufacturer shall not exceed the amount of registered capital.

(End of this chapter)