The Wider Environment

As the 2008 Olympics draw near

31/01/2006 20:20:25

Beijing challenges for the building world championship:

From his 16th-floor office on Beijing's Avenue of Eternal Peace, distressed-debt specialist Jack Rodman has a grandstand view of the $160-billion US worth of construction that will add the equivalent of three Manhattans to the skyline by 2008, when 's capital will host the Olympic Games.

To the east, a new central business district is rising near a futuristic television tower designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. To the west, a Chinese Wall Street is taking shape around the glass-prism Bank of China Ltd. headquarters created in 2001 by Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei.

Across the city, work is under way on luxury apartments, subway and rail lines, ring roads, Olympic venues and an airport terminal that will be bigger than all five at London's Heathrow. Already completed is the 4.9 million-square-foot (455,200-square- metre) Golden Resources Shopping Mall, which is twice the size of Bloomington, Minnesota's Mall of America, the largest shopping centre in the

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