The built environment is at the forefront of China's rapid urban explosion.
"Architecture in China has become like a kung fu film, with all of these giants trying to vanquish each other," says Wang Lu, editor of Beijing-based World Architecture magazine. In China, "you're seeing things that no one in their right mind would build elsewhere," according to Anthony Fieldman, an American architect recently posted to the Hong Kong office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. The lively urban street life of China's cities might become a casualty of the melee. "You can have the best architecture in the world, but if you have bad planning rules, you've wasted your time," says Richard Burdett, dean of the school of urban planning at the London School of Economics.
Thanks to Zvi Leve
FULL STORY: The world's most visionary architects are rebuilding China. Inside the aesthetic revolution

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