I guess that's another drawback to zoning laws in the US. Density makes a lot of creative things possible in cities that are harder to do in the burbs. Of course, the upside is possible negatives aren't all concentrated together either.
It's not only zoning laws. Houston (where I spent a portion of my childhood) is a large city with no zoning laws, and yet is exceptionally sprawling.
Suburbanism in Houston ends up being propelled through a mixture of:
1. Land availability, transit, and culture. There is a ton of space, it's flat w/ no natural geographical constraints, people like to live in big houses in the suburbs, there are freeways, and there is barely any public transit to speak of. So people live in the suburbs.
2. Contract law. There are large, privately developed suburbs where the developers require purchasers to agree to contracts governing their future use of the property, as a condition of sale. Suburbanites don't want a metalworking factory next door, so if you're developing a suburb, you get better sale prices if you can assure purchasers that that won't happen. So you do so by adding contract conditions. In a typical Houston suburb, your deed will have conditions attached, in which you have signed an agreement that neither you, nor anyone you convey the property to, will: subdivide the property, redevelop it into anything higher than 2 stories, redevelop it into a house that takes up more than x% of the lot, operate a commercial or industrial establishment on it, or lease it to tenants. This de facto introduces something like zoning via private contract law. So if you really don't want zoning, you'd have to actively suppress private-sector zoning, not only repeal governmental zoning.
It goes beyond zoning laws. China has maybe 4 classes of businesses: small businesses (which pay small bribes to local officials instead of following the rules), bigger businesses (which are gradually pressured to play by the book, depending on their size and who they are bribing), state-owned entities (which get the rules changed if they want to do something, but generally follow whichever level of government they report to), and foreign businesses (which have to do everything by the book).
So, it's probably illegal to run a business from a street-level apartment. But they do it anyway, because the government generally just says "no harm, no foul" (and some red envelopes probably get passed around). A homeless guy can buy a box of coke (or even beer), and sell it at a bus stop, and as long as he keeps on good terms with the local powers no-one would raise an eyebrow. He wouldn't get much business, though, because there'd be a guy with more capital doing it better and cheaper 10 steps away. In the US, he'd need a hawkers permit (which is usually literally impossible), a liquor license, a business license, regular tax returns, and so on.
The article is talking about Hua Qiang Bei, hardly the whole city of ShenZhen. It's what you might call a mall, surrounded by a modest shopping district.
That's like witnessing other parts of Shenzhen and concluding it's all about hipster kids with effeminate anime haircuts, shopping, video games, and HK tourists. Lots and lots of Hong Kong tourists.
