Urbanisation in Contemporary China Observed: Dramatic Changes and Disruptions

Shenzhen is one of the fastest-growing cities in China, having leapt from fishing village to a global city in a matter of a couple of decades. Here Huang Weiwen , the Deputy Director of the Urban and Architecture Department at Shenzhen Municipal Planning Bureau, provides the background to China's unrivalled urbanisation, which is unmatched in terms of both its speed and intensity. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Chinese City: A Self-Contained Utopia

Could the utopian ideal of building a tabula rasa city from scratch be slipping away? Neville Mars , Director of the Dynamic City Foundation (DCF), Beijing, highlights how in the last decade development has become focused on the periphery of existing metropolises. Fuelled by the aspirant middle classes' inexorable appetite for settling in modern cities, urbanisation is manifesting itself in ‘self-contained utopias’: walled-off, slick cities that are dormitory, satellite towns rather than independent urban settlements. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Taxonomy of Contemporary Chinese Cities (We Make Cities): A Sampling

Rem Koolhaas famously highlighted the uniformity of Chinese cities with his identification of ‘the generic city’ in the Pearl River Delta in the 1990s. Here Jiang Jun , Editor-in-Chief of Urban China magazine, and Kuang Xiaoming highlight the ‘unified diversity’ and complexity of contemporary urbanism through his own system of classification. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cross the River by Touching the Stones: Chinese Architecture and Political Economy in the Reform Era: 1978-2008

China's Open Door Policy and economic development set in motion in 1978 can be regarded as the triumph of pragmatism over theory - specifically Chairman Mao's brand of Marxist theory. Tao Zhu traces the progress of reform over the last 30 years, and its impact on Chinese architectural culture. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Back to the Future: The Everyday Built Environment in a Phase of Transition

Time is a crucial dimension in architecture, yet architectural education ignores it. While historical environments were able to evolve over centuries, the purist spirit that has prevailed since the advent of Modernism is at odds with the social dynamics of normal human life. John Habraken – a renowned architectural educator and writer both in the Netherlands and the US – examines the issues and argues for a more effective distribution of design control, showcasing recent projects in the Netherlands and Denmark that have achieved this.     

Transcending Type: Designing for Urban Complexity

David Grahame Shane , the author of a major new study Urban Design Since 1945: A Global Perspective, looks at type with the benefit of historical hindsight. Warning against its potential inflexibility and its use over the centuries as a reductive instrument in city creation, he is insistent that type should only be applied if deformed to respond to the informal patchwork of hybrid urban conditions.