Vancouver Forest is a unique 900-unit residential development – in Beijing! We’re told here the site was designed to replicate a mini west-side Vancouver neighborhood complete with west-side Vancouver-style housing, landscaping, trees – and bidding wars, presumably. A Google search reveals the plan was hatched in 2002. By 2006, construction had stalled however, when the Chinese government determined single detached homes were not in the collective interest of the country’s more than one billion people. By 2009, construction had resumed, and it’s reported that 900 homes of approximately 4300 square feet each have been completed. According to Business Vancouver, “North American single-family home subdivisions started emerging in China early this century following successful projects such as Orange County, which created a faux Los Angeles an hour’s drive from Beijing.”

So I read with interest a report today in The New York Times. According to the report, this trend of tacking on foreign names to developments around China could be coming to an end. We’re told concern over the foreign names was raised when a recent survey revealed that since 1986, “60,000 township names and 400,000 village names have fallen from use as a result of development and urbanization” in China. The minister of civil affairs has said names that “damage sovereignty and national dignity” or “violate the socialist core values and conventional morality” would be targeted. Meanwhile, developers argue the “international flavor helps sell houses”.