A gated community of highrises in China
Everything is Bigger in China
This morning the Houston Chronicle printed an op-ed by Christof Spieler about his journey to China. He blogged about the trip on OffCite and you can find all his posts here. If this interests you, be sure to attend the Chinese Architecture lecture series that starts next week.
In his op-ed, Spieler finds some surprising similarities between Houston and Chinese cities. For example, he likens a walled and gated compound of 30 highrises to our suburban planned communities. The observation of his that I really loved isn’t about a specific building, but is about attitude.
Spieler writes:
China is urbanizing fast. In the past 30 years, the population of Chinese cities has grown by 300 million; secondary cities like Chongqing, Wuhan and Chengdu are now bigger than Houston, and Shanghai’s metropolitan area has 3 million more people than New York’s. To see what those cities are like, the Rice Design Alliance sent me to China this summer.
As the Chinese build, they are looking to western cities like Houston for models. Pudong, Shanghai’s largest business district, was planned by a French firm and its tallest skyscrapers are by American architects. On the ground, it feels like Post Oak, only at a larger scale: wide streets, sidewalks designed as much for decoration as for pedestrians, buildings set back behind lawns and driveways, vast indoor malls full of luxury goods, and a skyline of gleaming glass towers. Like Houston, Shanghai has several downtowns, and each is trying to outdo the other.
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