Stop Making Cities Look the Same, Say Chinese Scholars

Ruan Yisan, a professor at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at Tongji University in Shanghai, encouraged planners to preserve historic buildings to "provide nutrition or inspiration to new Chinese building styles."

At the forum, Ruan "displayed pictures of two Chinese cities: Lanzhou in Gansu Province and Changsha in Hunan Province: both looked identical with crowded high-rises, though the two cities are located far from each other.

"You could barely discern differences between the two cities," Ruan said."