Is mass shutdown the best way to improve Beijing?

In Beijing, changes take place fast, either for better or for worse. So overnight, a bustling section for businesses of all kinds has been shut down and turned into a messy construction site.

What I am talking about is a street hundreds of meters to the north of where I work. A dozen years ago, owners of the apartments on the ground floor of frontage residential buildings, mostly native Beijingers, started to rent out their spare rooms to businesses, which are often run by those from outside the city.

Within years, restaurants, property brokerages and stores that sell cigarettes and wine, as well as clothes and stationery began to line the street, providing lots of convenience to people in the neighborhood, myself included.