BOOK - The Chinese Dream

THE CHINESE DREAM

a society under construction

Neville Mars , Adrian Hornsby and the DCF

010 Publishers, July 2008
784 pages, full colour, hardcover
price € 49.50
ISBN 978 90 6450 652 9

WHAT IF YOU BUILT THE WHOLE MASS OF WESTERN EUROPE IN 20 YEARS?

WHAT IF 400 MILLION FARMERS THEN MOVED IN?

WHAT WOULD IT LOOK LIKE? HOW WOULD IT WORK?

WOULD YOU BE ABLE TO GO TO SLEEP AT NIGHT?

AND IF YOU DID, WOULD YOU DREAM OF SOMEWHERE ELSE …?

China is in the midst of breakneck transformation. The last 30 years of astonishing economic growth and political and cultural reform have been driven by the world’s biggest ever urban boom. The new China is now halfway built: within the next 30 years the world’s most populous nation will most likely take centre-stage as a global superpower, with hundreds of millions of new urbanites flooding into the rapidly swelling cities. But this process — presenting no less than the construction of a new society — is taking place almost without time to think. The present is so all-consuming that fast realities threaten to eclipse the slow dream of tomorrow.

Taking as its starting point the goal announced in China in 2001 to build 400 new cities of 1 million inhabitants each by 2020, or 20 new cities a year for 20 years, the book explores the hopes and hazards of dreaming on such a scale. The question being asked is in fact no less than how to build a new utopia. But is China mortgaging its present for a promised future, and doing so at the same time that current speeds of construction eclipse any real forward planning?

The Chinese Dream is a visual tour de force, both encyclopaedic in scope and holistic in approach. Cutting across all levels of scale — from individual to nation — and backed by a truly multi-disciplinary team (encompassing architecture & urban planning, politics, economics, arts & culture, environmental concerns, and sociology) the book synthesizes a vast body of research to tackle the big questions of today, and to unpack the paradoxes at the heart of China’s struggle for change.

Assembled over a four year continuous presence in China, the book lays aside over-exposed starchitect projects, and looks instead at the enormous wave of anonymous buildings currently reshaping the landscape and fabric of China itself. Bold texts, self-critical design proposals, exploratory photoessays, a unique glossary, and an innovative survey of China’s young middle class, reveal China in all its astonishing diversity: from the glitziest megamalls to the gloomiest slums, and from the rural fringe to the mushrooming village. Featuring thousands of photographs, drawings and computer graphics, this is space as you have never seen it before: brash, outlandish, and very Chinese.

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REVIEWS

Cadoc
http://www.cadoc.nl/cadoc.php?artikel=1274&titel=The_Chinese_Dream._A_society_under_construction._-_Neville_Marsh_en_Adrian_Hornsby **Geschiedenis** http://www.geschiedenis.nl/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2984&Itemid=16

NOS Journaal
http://www.nos.nl/nosjournaal/artikelen/2008/8/3/030808_olympische_boeken.html | NOS Journaal

CLUSTER
http://www.cluster.eu/v2/themes/ta_paracchi_eng/ http://www.cluster.eu/v2/editions/mars/

ABITARE
http://abitare.corriere.it/index_eng.shtml

VOLUME issue 16
http://www.archis.org

De Groene Amsterdammer
http://www.groene.nl/?key=95b575cdefc67c33b002f31b3c4dc8be

Independent Publishers Award 2009
Outstanding book of the year - Silver in the category: Most Outstanding Design.

BURB - INSERT MAGAZINE FROM THE YEAR 2020

Introductions

1. THE CHINESE DREAM

Neville Mars

DREAMING IS NOT A LUXURY. AROUND TWO HOURS EVERY NIGHT OUR BRAINS PRODUCE DREAMS. PRECISELY WHY IS NOT CLEAR, BUT THE GENERAL FUNCTIONS SEEM EVIDENT. DREAMS PROCESS OUR RECENT EXPERIENCES. DATA STORED IN OUR TEMPORARY MEMORY IS ENCODED AND TRANSFERRED TO BECOME PART OF THE NARRATIVE OF OUR LONG TERM MEMORY. THIS IS THE SYSTEM-CHECK OF OUR MIND. CONSOLIDATING NEW DATA, IT FEEDS OUR UNDERSTANDING AND CONSTRUCTS OUR IDENTITY. EQUALLY, DREAMS WILL CONSIDER THE FUTURE. WHEN FACING IMPORTANT OR DIFFICULT MOMENTS, OUR DREAMS WILL SET THE STAGE TO ALLOW US A VIRTUAL TEST RUN. WE CAN PREPARE OURSELVES — GENERATE NEW IDEAS IN ANTICIPATION OF CHANGING CIRCUMSTANCES. DREAMS BECOME THE PLAYGROUND OF OUR DESIRES; A SAFE PLACE TO EXPRESS UNCHARTED URGES FOR WHICH THERE MAY BE NO ROOM IN WAKING LIFE. SOME DREAMS WILL BE REJECTED, WHILE OTHERS BECOME POWERFUL ASPIRATIONS THAT GIVE DIRECTION TO OUR DECISIONS.

RISE AND SHINE: CHINA HAS BEEN UP FOR THREE DECADES. WITH DENG XIAOPING’S ACCESSION TO POWER, CHINA LAUNCHED ITS LAST AND BOLDEST DREAM: THE DREAM OF INDIVIDUAL PROSPERITY. IT OPENED ITS EYES TO AN ALTERNATIVE REALITY, ITS DOORS TO THE GLOBAL ECONOMY, AND CONFORMED TO MARKET PRAGMATISM TO REALIZE THIS DREAM. SINCE THEN, A SINGLE MASSIVE WAVE OF PROGRESS HAS KEPT THE ENTIRE NATION ON ITS FEET.

THE SUCCESS HAS AMAZED FRIEND AND FOE. TODAY ‘GETTING RICH IS GLORIOUS’ MAY HAVE LOST ITS APPEAL AS A PARTY SLOGAN, BUT IT HAS EXPANDED TO BECOME THE INTRINSIC MOTIVATION OF CHINA’S ENTIRE POPULATION. SPREADING FAST BEYOND THE INITIAL TESTING GROUNDS OF THE SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONES, THE GROWING PROSPERITY HAS NURTURED A SOLID AND CONSIDERABLE MIDDLE CLASS AND SPURRED THE CONSTRUCTION OF INDUSTRY AND CITIES ACROSS THE COUNTRY. THESE CITIES ARE THE TRADEMARKS OF MODERN CHINA, THE SUBJECT OF THIS BOOK, AND THE OBJECTIVE OF THE CHINESE DREAM: A SOCIETY OF MIDDLE CLASS CONSUMERS SETTLED IN MODERN CITIES.

THE ASPIRATIONAL DRIVE OF INDIVIDUALS SHAPING CONTEMPORARY URBANIZATION RESEMBLES THE AMERICAN DREAM OF THE FIFTIES, AND WITH RURAL POPULATIONS IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD FLOCKING TOGETHER IN MEGASLUMS, THIS MUST BE THE CORE COMPONENT OF THE GLOBAL DREAM. BUT WHAT IS THE FORM OF THE MODERN CITY? HOW CAN IT BE REALIZED? AND WHAT SOCIETY DOES IT ENGENDER?

...Continue reading the introduction.