East Asia Modern: Shaping the Contemporary City

(Paperback)

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East Asia, and in particular the region made up of Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, Japan and China, is currently a hotbed of urban expansion; cities such as Singapore, Taipei, Seoul, Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai are expanding at a prodigious rate, and this ongoing process of expansion and modernization is bringing rapid and widespread change to the area. Peter G. Rowe's East Asia Modern is a timely comparative study of urban expansion in the region, examining the processes by which new city building has taken place in recent years. The author - a well-known writer in the field of East Asian architecture and urbanism - focuses on how the modernizing process might most usefully be understood, especially with regard to building processes and projects; and how that understanding differs from other modernizing circumstances. He explains what the process has meant for the general cultural diffusion of modern, largely Western, ideas, how East Asian urban regions have developed their own distinct kind of modernity, and also what lessons can be learned from the contemporary East Asian experience. The book also provides a historical assessment of the region, showing how cities have developed over the last century and setting into context their individual paths towards becoming modern. East Asia Modern refutes many of the common misconceptions about life in modern East Asia, and provides a readable, critical assessment of the cities of the region, while also pointing to possible ways forward for the future.

Reviews

... an interesting, well-informed, critical and comparative overview of contemporary modernisation in East Asian cities ... A strength of the book is the examination of architectural style and building form. A real sense of cityscape is provided via the accounts of pencil buildings in Hong Kong and the verticality of living ... This book should be a valuable library reference source ... The book's content is up-to-date and detailed ... the numerous black and white photographic illustrations are excellent Geography

Author Bio

Peter G. Rowe is Professor and former Dean of the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University. He is the author of a number of books including Architectural Encounters with Essence and Form in Modern China (2002, with Seng Kuan) and Modernity and Housing (1993).