Every building in China must guarantee its neighbors get at least one hour of direct sunlight.
It sounds reasonable. Even noble. Who doesn't want sunlight?
But here's the problem: China applies the same rule everywhere. In the south, where the sun sits high year-round, there's plenty of sunlight to go around. No big deal.
In northern China, it's a different story. The sun hangs lower, especially in winter. To meet the same one-hour requirement, buildings need massive spacing. Cities sprawl. Land that could house thousands gets wasted on mandatory gaps.
The result? Housing becomes more expensive because you need more land per unit. Cities stretch horizontally when they should grow vertically. Infrastructure costs balloon.
The irony cuts deep. Regulations meant to make housing more livable make it less affordable. Laws designed to improve urban life force more people into cramped conditions because there isn't enough well-located housing to go around.
This is the trap of good intentions in policy. Every requirement sounds reasonable in isolation. But requirements interact with geography, economics, and physics in ways policymakers rarely predict.
Well-intentioned rules often become the very obstacles they were meant to remove.