Two events obliterated urban landscapes around the globe this week. Ammonium nitrate not stored properly will become a bomb. It happened many times before. 75 years ago a single bomb devastated a Japanese town.
Not violent, and so far unnoticed by press and pundits is another change: Trump directing his “lets break things to get reactions” spiel on WeChat. (And tiktok). Outside of China WeChat is not widely understood. I have never seen or used it. Neither have I handled Fertilizer components or enriched uranium. WeChat is how people do everything in China. Banning WeChat for a Chinese person is like banning the Internet for you. Why would that change the urban landscape? Much of the building boom in DTLA is fueled by Chinese investments. Chinese money erected lots of glas towers, hoping to sell at least parts of them to Chinese citizens. An A380 can get you from the Middle Kingdom to Hollywood in great comfort and less than a day. Sunshine, stars, America. That is was something to go for. But without WeChat it suddenly is no longer interesting: What good is it, if you see Jonny Depp driving by (you never do, but it sells real estate) and you can not send your friends pictures. What good is it, if the sun is always shining, but non of your family members can reach you.
For reasons that don’t matter, I care for a specific building in Downtown LA. So I check occasionally how many listings there are in Zillow:
- May 15 – 11 listings
- May 29 – 14 listings
- Jun 12 – 14 listings
- July 11 – 20 listings
- Aug 8 – 24 listings
This doubling in inventory has nothing to do with the impact of 45 attempting to mess with Chinese online entities. It would take months to show up in these numbers.
Prices didn’t change much. They seem to slowly decline. But no real big changes. Yet. Since money and its value is questionable right now and going forward they might never really go down. I think that – depending on what individual situations will be going forward – there will be spikes and good deals to be had. There is certainly pressure building from the circumstances.
Banning an App seems like nothing, but it is something. People exist through their screens. It is reality for them. That is stupid. But something being stupid never has stopped people from following it, as long as it tickles enough of their fancies they will continue to go where it feels good …