What it looks like inside China’s massive apartment complex where 30,000 residents don’t ever need to leave

Would you believe one building could hold the population of a small city?

Welcome to Hangzhou, China, where Regent International towers over the skyline and swallows entire neighborhoods inside.

From the outside it looks like another glossy high-rise. Inside? It’s basically a vertical fortress.

Residents call it home, but critics say it’s closer to a human hive.

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Regent International: the self-contained city in the sky

Regent International wasn’t always a mega-apartment block. 

It started life as a luxury hotel, before being reborn as one of the world’s largest residential buildings. 

Now it stands almost 670 feet tall, with 39 floors stacked with enough people to outnumber entire towns.

Somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 residents call it home.

The blueprint came from architect Alicia Liu, who designed it as a ‘self-contained city’.

That means supermarkets, restaurants, internet cafés, gyms, swimming pools, beauty salons, even daycare all tucked into the same structure. 

There’s a subway stop right underneath too, so in theory you never really need to step outside.

For renters, the draw is price and variety. 

Studios start at around $209 per month, climbing from shoebox-sized 300 square foot pads to family-sized units of 700 square feet and up. 

A few lucky residents combine multiple apartments into sprawling homes with balconies and river views.

Some see it as peak convenience – a future-forward solution to overcrowded cities. 

Others feel it’s a trade-off, citing a lack of privacy and elevator wait times stretching into eternity. 

The building has strict noise rules, cleaning crews, and garbage rooms that feed into centralized collection – a level of order that feels less like casual apartment life and more like managed infrastructure.

The rise of mega-complex living

Regent International isn’t an outlier – it’s part of a bigger trend in China’s hyper-dense cities. 

Developers are blending housing with retail hubs, transport links, and lifestyle services, essentially compressing entire neighborhoods into one vertical city. 

It’s efficient, it’s profitable, and for many, it’s irresistible.

Online reactions capture the split mood. 

Some commenters compare it to sci-fi ‘hive cities’ straight out of ‘Warhammer’.

Others joke about trying to deliver pizza to ‘apartment 29,478 on the 234th floor.’

And yet, plenty of residents swear by it.

They praise the convenience, security, and tightly run facilities.

The model is spreading, and not just in China. 

As cities worldwide grapple with overcrowding and skyrocketing housing costs, self-contained mega-complexes start to look less like oddities and more like prototypes for the future.

Whether you see it as genius urban planning or a hive of convenience, Regent International proves how far vertical living can go.

And maybe it offers a glimpse of what tomorrow’s cities will really look like, for better or worse. The post What it looks like inside China’s massive apartment complex where 30,000 residents don’t ever need to leave appeared first on Supercar Blondie.