The Chinese Dream; A Society under Construction

THIS IS NOT a conventional book on China. Although it has many detailed chapters by a range of authors, these are within a volume that is dominated by photographs and graphics – most of them focusing on urban areas. As the text states, “...urbanization is China’s answer to what it’s up to and where it’s going.” The book is these authors’ responses to China, urbanization and the year 2020. The 17 chapters include: the birth of the megalopolis; “keep ‘em coming”; population and the urban crisis; China’s energy fix; imagining Beijing’s ecological future; fortification (gated communities); the changing urban fabric; Beijing Boom Tower; policy sprawl (and the internal logic of spatial production); dynamic density and re-engineering the city; individualized mass transit at hyperspeed; the economics of consumerization – clustering and dependencies; utopian cities; and cities without history.