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.
Venice: Myth and Reality
The ambition of dominating the seas was celebrated through the formulation of rituals, ceremonies and myths.
How to win the long jump
Martin Earnshaw | 17 September 2012 Who now regards Athens as a world beating Olympic city? Today, the horror stories of abandoned stadia and rubbish strewn swimming pools, though disputed, are commonplace in media accounts of what happened to the Olympic site. The fear that the Olympic Park of 2012 may too become a wind-swept and neglected wasteland in the heart of a stubbornly run-down East London dominates the never ending debate...
As China is getting bolder the West is losing confidence
Austin Williams | Monday 3rd September 2012 LIVING and working in China – where I teach urban design to eager architecture students – is a constant adventure. Unlike the UK, where we seem to spend our time discussing what, how or even whether to build, it is exciting to be in a country that is actually doing it. China is building 20 cities a year. Britain hasn’t built a city in the last 50 years, instead imbuing existing towns with...
Emerging Africa
‘Emerging Africa: how 17 countries are leading the way’ by Steven C. Radelet; Center for Global Development, 2010. 169pp Reviewed by Joel Cohen | 22 August 2012 On the 50th anniversary of the publication of Things Fall Apart, Nigerian author Chinua Achebe was asked “Are things really falling apart or are they starting to come back together in Africa?” His reply was incisive: “It’s always happening both of them. It depends on where you...
The Power Broker
‘The Power Broker: Robert Moses And The Fall Of New York’ by Robert Caro; Knopf, 1974. 1344pp Reviewed by Michael Owens | 31 March 2012 Robert Caro’s epic account of the life of Robert Moses, the man central to shaping the physical fabric and governance of twentieth century New York, is both scholarly and highly readable. It is considered a definitive account of the play of power in the making of the greatest world city at...
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