DCF—Urban China 2020
The Dynamic City Foundation is an international research and design platform investigating the rapidly changing urban environment of China. For information see the project summary.
中文
Book "THE CHINESE DREAM - a society under construction"
Order on-line now at 010 Publishers or in Beijing at Timezone8 bookstore in the 798 art district.
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WHAT IF YOU BUILT THE WHOLE MASS OF WESTERN EUROPE IN 20 YEARS?
WHAT IF 400 MILLION FARMERS THEN MOVED IN?
WHAT WOULD IT LOOK LIKE? HOW WOULD IT WORK?
WOULD YOU BE ABLE TO GO TO SLEEP AT NIGHT? AND IF YOU DID, WOULD YOU DREAM OF SOMEWHERE ELSE …?
Factsheet
THE CHINESE DREAM - a society under construction
China is in the midst of breakneck transformation. The last 30 years of astonishing economic growth and political and cultural reform are driven by the urbanization processes which are remaking the world today. But the new China is now halfway built: within the next 30 years the world’s most populous nation will most likely take center-stage as global superpower, with hundreds of millions of new urbanites flooding into rapidly swelling cities. But this urban boom — presenting no less than the construction of a new society — is taking place almost without time to think. The present is so all-consuming that fast realities threaten to eclipse the slow dream of tomorrow.
Taking as its starting point the goal announced in China in 2001 to build 400 new cities of 1 million inhabitants each by 2020, or 20 new cities a year for 20 years, the book explores the hopes and hazards of dreaming on such a scale. The question being asked is in fact no less than how to build a new utopia. But is China mortgaging its present for a promised future, and doing so at the same time that current speeds of construction eclipse any real forward planning?
The Chinese Dream is a visual tour de force, both encyclopedic in scope and holistic in approach. Cutting across all levels of scale — from individual to nation — and backed by a truly multi-disciplinary team (encompassing architecture & urban planning, politics, economics, arts & culture, environmental concerns, and sociology) the book synthesizes a vast body of research to tackle the big questions of today, and to unpack the paradoxes at the heart of China’s struggle for change.
Assembled over a four year continuous presence in China, the book lays aside over-exposed starchitect projects, and looks instead at the enormous building wave currently reshaping the landscape and fabric of China itself. Bold texts, self-critical design proposals, exploratory photoessays, a unique glossary, and an innovative survey of China’s young middle class, reveal China in all its astonishing diversity: from the glitziest megamalls to the gloomiest slums, and from the rural fringe to the mushrooming village. Featuring thousands of photographs, drawings and computer graphics, this is space as you have never seen it before: brash, outlandish, and very Chinese.
Produced and designed by :
Neville Mars, Adrian Hornsby
& the DYNAMIC CITY FOUNDATION
English/Chinese
784 pp / 250 x 200 mm / hardcover
price € 49.50
ISBN 978 90 6450 652 9
to be published July 2008
010 Publishers, Rotterdam