Beijing & Urban Planning/Design

There is an interesting article in this weeks New Yorker about the rapid urban transformation occurring in Beijing. Many consider the construction of more avante style buildings to be unique to China because of their desire to develop at such a break neck pace. Even though most of the buildings are designed by Western firms this article and the people of China argue that the West is too restrained to accept the construction of such odd buildings.

"This clever prototype for a city without streets is also an admission that the traditional street-based city doesn’t have much of a future here. As an attempt to bring avant-garde ideas to high-rise housing, the development is impressive, but at another level it’s not unlike the gated apartment compounds that now fill much of Beijing’s rapidly developing outskirts. The twenty-first-century equivalent of the ancient hutongs is a kind of skyscraper suburbia. You drive there, and then you get back in your car every time you go outside—exactly the model that planners in the United States have been trying to get away from in recent decades."
It is unique that the focus of these structures is more geared towards a suburbia living style. Recently, in the "West" there has been a greater focus on how to "green" buildings and how to design them to compliment their urban surroundings, but not to isolate the inhabitants from the urban environment in which they want to live. (For more thoughts on how cities are going to adapt to the new problems faced by population growth and the scarcity of resources: James side of things). It appears that the residents and planners of Beijing have given up on urban livability. Why? This article argues that the city of Beijing was not designed for the modern era, mainly traffic congestion, and so there is a significant conflict between the structural modernization occurring on top of a pre-modern city. It's a conventional urban planners nightmare, but at the same time a unique opportunity for creative and groundbreaking urban planning concepts. There is no question that China has the money. Who is going to come up with the plans?