Princeton Architectural Press
Available: 04/10/08
6 x 9 · 336 pages
978-1-56898-627-2
CDN $38.95 · cl

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The Concrete Dragon

China’s Urban Revolution and What it Means for the World

Thomas J. Campanella

In the early 1980s, China launched the greatest building boom in human history, beginning a period of wholesale construction and destruction unlike anything the world has ever seen. It now has 102 cities of over a million residents and is home to many of the planet’s tallest buildings and biggest malls. In a single decade, more Chinese families have been displaced by redevelopment than by 30 years of urban renewal in the U.S. China’s rich urban architectural legacy is being sacrificed to make way for icons of progress and modernity.

The Concrete Dragon examines the forces behind this urban revolution and traces both the historical precedents and the increasingly globalized information, ideas and trends that create a new Chinese landscape.

THOMAS J. CAMPANELLA is associate professor of urban planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was a Fulbright fellow at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and taught at Nanjing University. His previous books include Cities From the Sky and Republic of Shade, winner of the Spiro Kostof Award.