Imagine a city where the streets don’t just stretch left and right, but also up and down—a place where buildings seem to defy gravity, stacking roads on top of each other like layers in a cake. Welcome to Chongqing, China’s '8D city,' a metropolis where elevation isn’t just a feature—it’s a way of life. But here’s where it gets controversial: as this city climbs toward the future, what gets left behind? And this is the part most people miss: the human stories of adaptation, loss, and resilience that unfold in its vertical maze.
Chongqing, home to around 32 million people, is a sprawling urban jungle in southwest China. Its nickname, '8D city,' is no exaggeration. With 76% of its land covered by mountains, 22% by hills, and a mere 2% by flat land, the city’s terrain has forced its residents to rethink how they live, work, and move. Unlike other Chinese cities, bicycles and e-scooters are a rarity here—the streets are simply too steep. Instead, Chongqing’s architecture and infrastructure have evolved to embrace its verticality, creating a landscape that feels like something out of a sci-fi novel.
Take Chen Hao, a 63-year-old retiree who lives in a building without an elevator. His daily climb to the third floor is a ritual he’s performed for decades, ever since his family moved there in the 1980s. From his balcony, he gestures to the horizon, now dominated by high-rises that didn’t exist when he was young. 'The view was extremely open,' he recalls. 'We could see the mountains, the Jialing River—even Shamo Stone far away. Now we can’t see any of that.' Chen’s story is a microcosm of Chongqing’s transformation, where progress often comes at the cost of familiar landscapes and memories.
But Chongqing’s verticality isn’t just about physical challenges—it’s also about redefining direction. 'People here don’t say east, south, west, north,' explains Gong Yupeng, a business consultant who moved to Chongqing from Qingdao. 'They only say up and down. Buildings face every direction, so it’s easy to lose your sense of direction.' Gong, who calls himself a 'Shandong man becoming a Chongqing son-in-law,' has learned to navigate the city’s maze-like streets with the help of 'yellow Ferraris'—local slang for Chongqing’s yellow cabs. Despite the initial culture shock, he’s grown to love the city’s unique rhythm: 'It’s like walking through a maze. After you go down a small path or up a flight of stairs, it’s a completely different scene. It’s a little surprise Chongqing gives me.'
The city’s architecture is a testament to its ingenuity. Li Weitao, an architect who has spent over a decade designing buildings in Chongqing, points to Yuzhong district as the epitome of the city’s verticality. 'The entire spatial structure is much more three-dimensional,' he explains. 'Every single project encounters very complicated site conditions and height-difference relationships.' One striking example is Baixiangju, a 24-storey residential complex completed in 1993—without elevators. Its six towers house over 500 households stacked into the mountainside, with stairways leading into other stairways, paths, and narrow roads. Aerial corridors connect the blocks, forming a web of passages lined with shops and restaurants. It’s a design that exploits a loophole in building codes, which at the time required elevators only for buildings over 10 storeys. By creating entrances at three different levels, Baixiangju’s developers ensured no single access point exceeded that limit—a cost-saving workaround that would be impossible today.
But not everyone is enamored by Chongqing’s verticality. For Pang, a 27-year-old elevator repairman, the city’s terrain is just another part of the job. 'Elevators are basically all the same,' he shrugs. 'Other places have a lot too—it’s just that Chongqing has a bit more.' Yet, for those who maintain its infrastructure, the extraordinary has long since become ordinary.
The cost of Chongqing’s climb is felt most acutely in its social fabric. In Gangfeng village, Chen Hao’s father, Chen Shijin, reminisces about the strong community spirit of the past. 'Honestly, I still miss the earlier era,' Chen Hao admits. 'There was strong human warmth—a strong neighborly feeling.' Li, the architect, theorizes that the lack of public spaces in modern high-rises has distanced neighbors from one another. 'When public space is lacking, neighborly relationships become distant,' he says. Chen Shijin, however, is pragmatic. 'To be honest, this building should be demolished,' he declares, pointing to the hassle of living in a walk-up. 'Once you adapt to the new environment, it’s the same.'
Yet, there are places in Chongqing where old and new have found balance. In Nan'an district, Houbao—once a bustling commercial zone in the 1980s and 1990s—was revitalized through a government-led urban renewal project launched in 2022. Instead of demolition, the project focused on careful intervention: upgrading infrastructure, refurbishing building facades, and inserting small commercial spaces and community areas into underused corners. At its heart is a community lounge, a shared space where residents gather and activities are organized. 'Through the creation of public space, we both respected the original residents' living space and introduced new business formats for young people,' Li explains. The result? A surprisingly harmonious relationship between generations.
But progress comes with irony. As Li observes, 'When people talk about artificial intelligence and technology, they initially hope these tools will do remarkable things. But in the end, what they replace first are the most basic jobs. The first industries hit by technology are often the ones involving hard physical labor. That’s something people didn’t fully anticipate, and it’s very cruel.' This is evident in the decline of the 'bang bang jun,' Chongqing’s porters who once numbered between 300,000 and 500,000 in the 1990s. Today, their ranks have dwindled to just a few thousand, driven by better roads, delivery apps, and the simple fact that few young people want the work. Xu, a 63-year-old porter, is among the few who remain. 'Hard manual labor never makes much money,' he says. 'It’s just to scrape by. Barely enough to live.' Yet, he sees his work as indispensable: 'Without 'bang bang,' how do goods get moved out? Doesn’t it still require human labor?'
As Chongqing continues to climb, the question remains: What does it mean to build a city on the backs of its people? And as the old gives way to the new, what memories and connections are we willing to leave behind? Li offers a thought-provoking perspective: 'Destroying someone's lived experience is no different from taking their life—from a certain perspective, it's a very serious matter.'
So, what do you think? Is Chongqing’s vertical evolution a marvel of human ingenuity, or a cautionary tale about the cost of progress? Share your thoughts in the comments—let’s keep the conversation climbing.
