By 2025, China will have built fifteen new 'supercities' each with 25
million inhabitants. It will have created 250 'Eco-cities' as well:
clean, green, car-free, people-friendly, high-tech urban centres. From
the edge of an impending eco-catastrophe, we are arguably witnessing
history's greatest environmental turnaround - an urban experiment that
may provide valuable lessons for cities worldwide.
Whether or not we choose to believe the hype - there is little doubt
that this is an experiment that needs unpicking, understanding, and
learning from. Austin Williams, The Architectural Review's China
correspondent, explores the progress and perils of China's vast eco-city
program, describing the complexities which emerge in the race to balance
the environment with industrialisation, quality with quantity, and the
liberty of the individual with the authority of the Chinese state.
Lifting the lid on the economic and social realities of the Chinese
blueprint for eco-modernisation, Williams tells the story of China's
rise, and reveals the pragmatic, political and economic motives that
lurk behind the successes and failures of its eco-cities.
Will these new kinds of urban developments be good, humane, healthy
places? Can China find a 'third way' in which humanity, nature, economic
growth and sustainability are reconciled? And what lessons can we learn
for our own vision of the urban future?
This is a timely and readable account which explores a range of themes -
environmental, political, cultural and architectural - to show how the
eco-city program sheds fascinating light on contemporary Chinese
society, and provides a lens through which to view the politics of
sustainability closer to home.
