If developers had their way

[giza]

...we could expect to see more scenes like this:

Comments

[drzarron]

Near our house, there is an office park, home to some very large important companies. And right in the middle of Budd parking lot is an old stone farmhouse, barn, silo, outbuildings.

It was an old farm that when it came time to develop the area, the owners didn't sell. And the historic farm law doesn't allow for eminent domain, so they built around it.

Nowadays, it has been remodeled, all the buildings connected by new stuctures, insides redone to house the Kresge Foundation, a very large charity.

I like it when they adapt and renew older structures into new uses.

[oryx]

My god that is awesome. Depending on the laws in China, the developers might be required to give him (easy) access to his property - since he probably had it before they dug out the roads and paths he was using.

If I were him personally, I would sit there until the end of time..

[rebelsheart]

That could get interesting in say Singapore, where if you own land, your authority over that land extends to the center of the earth - this made building certain new underground roadways interesting.

[zorinlynx]

I'm actually surprised to see this; if ownership rights were NOT respected, the Chinese authorities likely would have removed him from the house already.

The fact that the developers had to dig around his house to try to move him out shows that the Chinese do have SOME property rights, even if not enough to prevent something crazy like this from happening.

Interesting in any case.

[shenryyr]

in china, the gov't owns all the lands; people don't own land, but you can own buildings.  so what they've done here is reduced it to just his house, which he does own.  if he doesn't leave soon I'm guessing they'll soon lift up the house entirely and move it to where the gov't said he should live.