Chinas Urban Revolution: Understanding Chinese Eco-Cities

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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 historys 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 Reviews China correspondent, explores the progress and perils of Chinas 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 Chinas 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.

Reviews

Equipped with the diverse talents and tools of a journalist, scholar, and travel writer, Williams tells a fascinating story about Chinas pursuit of economic growth and environmental protection, urbanization schemes and new socialist countryside initiatives, urban modernization programs and rural heritage policies, which can only be described as contradictory, incongruous, and conflicting yet daunting in their nature, driven by high-minded seriousness, a pragmatic spirit, and unalloyed ambition. * Sustainability: the Journal of Record *
Among the myriad of books on a rising China, Chinas Urban Revolution sits among the most valuable. * Asian Affairs *
Chinas Urban Revolution is a terrific book. * Spiked *
This is an in-depth exploration of the recent explosion in city development in China ... What is unique about this book is the fact that Williams spent several years teaching in China and made contact with local academics, planners, bureaucrats and architects as part of his research... The book also contains excellent notes and references for each chapter. -- Edward Farrell * University of Lincoln, UK *

Author Bio

Austin Williams is Associate Professor of Architecture at Xian Jiaotong-Liverpool University in China and Director of the Future Cities Project. He is the China correspondent for The Architectural Review and has written for a wide range of magazines and newspapers, from The Economist to the London Review of Books.