The 40 years of China’s reform and opening up can be described as four decades of “tearing down and building up” on a grand scale. Around 1991, Japan’s real estate bubble burst. It is also worth noting that Japan’s peak population of 18-year-olds occurred around 1992, meaning that the rigid demand for housing among young people had already peaked in the 1990s. However, if readers simply assume that Japan’s real estate sector became stagnant after the 1990s, they would be gravely mistaken. It would also be inaccurate to say that Japan has been engaged in “tearing down and building up” nationwide over the past 30 years, from 1995 to the present. But if I limit the geographical scope of “tearing down and building up,” then the statement holds entirely true. The geographical limitation is this: the core business districts of Japan’s major cities (the so-called CBDs and main commercial areas) and the areas surrounding major train stations. In these places, large-scale redevelopment has been ongoing for the past 30 years.
改革開放的40年，可以說中國是“大拆大建”的40年。1991年左右，日本房地產泡沫破滅了。而且值得注意的是，日本的18歲成年人口的高峰在1992年左右，也就是，年輕人對住房的剛性需求在90年代就見頂了。但是如果讀者簡單地猜測，90年代以后的日本房地產行業是一譚死水，那就是大錯特錯了。如果說過去30年，也就是日本1995到現在，日本都在“大拆大建”，那是不符合事實的。但是如果筆者對“大拆大建”的地理范圍做出一定的限制，那這句話是完全成立的。這個地理位置的限定就是：日本主要大城市的核心商業區（也就是所謂的CBD區域和主要商業區域）以及主要的車站周邊。這些地方過去30年一直都在“大拆大建”。