Ordos’ Other Ghost Town
Ordos in Inner Mongolia is synonymous with the phrase ‘Ghost Town’; a term describing cities apparently built on a whim, with no-one to occupy them. With China having already started to fulfil its pledge to build 400 new cities in 20 years, innumerable articles have emerged in the Western press to laugh, pity or gloat at the emergence of such tragi-comical examples of urban desolation. Forbes magazine is typical of many...
The Practical Possibilist
Population 10 Billion: The Coming Demographic Crisis and How to Survive It by Danny Dorling; Constable, 2013. 448pp Reviewed by Martin Earnshaw | 14 October 2013 The recent news that the UK is experiencing a mini baby boom was greeted with predictable panic about how Britain’s services would cope. From worries about an ageing population to the familiar refrain (1) about depleted resources, population has long been a lightning rod for...
Europe and China: Strategic Partners or Rivals?
Just half a century after De Gaulle’s vision that Europe (‘from the Atlantic to the Urals’) would decide the destiny of the world, Europe looks anything like a global powerhouse. With the euro falling apart, European authority is regarded by many, with barely concealed disdain. From Britain to Bulgaria, the European Union is seldom mentioned without the suffix ‘crisis’, and the phrase ‘European integration’ is widely held to be an...
Dear Chris…
This is a series of letters between Chris Twinn, Arup Fellow & Senior Sustainability Consultant in Shanghai; and Austin Williams of FCP, after the publication of Williams’ article in China Daily (here) Dear Austin Having read your article in the China Daily criticising sustainability and sustainability consultants, I would like to say that I agree there are there are too many Western consultants peddling low level...
Manufacturing the future
The New Industrial Revolution: consumers, globalization and the end of mass production by Peter Marsh; Yale UP, 2012. 320 pp Reviewed by Martin Earnshaw | 7 March 2013 Even the ghosts of England’s past oppose HS2 it seems. On 10th February 2013 the Observer ran a bizarre story about how HS2 might go through a historic battle site from the War of the Roses. The fact that the actual location of the battle is unknown is beside the point...
India, China: Talk of the town
By Austin Williams | Feb 19, 2013 As an architect living in Suzhou, just outside Shanghai, I have become blasé about the skyline being transformed before my very eyes. The classic view of Shanghai’s towering waterfront may not represent great architecture, but it’s impressive all the same… and constantly improving. In most cities across China it is the same story: high-speed construction activity, modernisation, transformation and...
How Many Times Has the World Ended?
By Alastair Donald | 08 February 2013 You may recall that the world should have ended recently, on December 21, 2012, to be precise. As it rather smugly reported on the preparations being made around the world for the coming apocalypse, the Guardian reminded us that the Maya Long Count calendar read ‘13.0.0.0.0’ (‘thirteen b’aktun’) for the first time in 5,125 years, and this it was believed by some,...
Ghost Towns
By Alastair Donald | 13 January 2013 Last year a historic landmark was reached, but with little fanfare. The fact that the people of China are now predominantly urban, was largely ignored by the Western media. By contrast, considerable attention focused on China’s new ‘ghost towns’ or kong cheng − cities such as Ordos in the Gobi desert and Zhengzhou New District in Henan Province which are still being built but are largely...
Masterplanning the Future
By Austin Williams | 6 December 2012 The great American urbanist Daniel Burnham, the man who drafted the first comprehensive city plan a century ago, summed up the necessary ambition involved in the art of city-making: “Make no little plans,” he said. “They have no magic to stir men’s blood.” For a Western architect like myself arriving in China, four things are immediately apparent: one is the breakneck ‘speed’ of the...
The Great Stagnation
Instead of focussing merely on the recent period of financial turmoil, The Great Stagnation encourages a longer term view.
Listen in
Next meeting
Publications
NEW TITLE
