Reinventing the Chinese City

The path from small, poor villages dotting a vast desolate Asian hinterland to the world's largest middle-class urbanity in four decades is impressive and compelling. Richard Hu guides global readers through China's metropolitan rise with analytical sophistication that shows both promise and flaws of the Chinese megacities. He presents China's new cities not as clones of the West but as a new genre of city building and an authentic attempt at reinventing urbanity. This is a timely text for policymakers, environmentalists, urban planners, and architects as we try to build cities of and for the future. -- Edward J. Blakely, Emeritus Professor of City Planning, University of California, Berkeley, and former President of the Pacific Rim Council on Urban Development This book provides a compact, lucid, and timely account of Chinese cities at the leading edge of urbanization. With China hitching its socialist modernization to indigenous innovation, cities are being charged with realizing the vision of a smart, livable, green future. Richard Hu does an admirable job of showing both top-down and bottom-up actions shaping cities into innovation hotbeds, the emerging lessons for others, and the way forward being charted by planners. It is a must-read for experts and those interested in the urban facets of China's development. This book provides a compact, lucid, and timely account of Chinese cities at the leading edge of urbanization. With China hitching its socialist modernization to indigenous innovation, cities are being charged with realizing the vision of a smart, livable, green future. Richard Hu does an admirable job of showing both top-down and bottom-up actions shaping cities into innovation hotbeds, the emerging lessons for others, and the way forward being charted by planners. It is a must-read for experts and those interested in the urban facets of China's development. -- Shahid Yusuf, Chief Economist of the Growth Dialogue, George Washington University Richard Hu provides a probing, well-informed, and cogently organized account of how China is crafting its 'new normal' of urbanization in its era of a green revolution, smart city commitment, and post-industrialization. -- Peter G. Rowe, Raymond Garbe Professor of Architecture and Urban Design and Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor