Straight Talk About China's Urbanization

In this illuminating and refreshingly candid book, the prominent Chinese-American architect and urban planner James Jao shares a unique inside view of the development of modern China and the immensity of its urban challenge. Having lived in Hong Kong and Beijing for most of the last two decades, Jao, widely known as the Urban Doctor, has become one of the most influential people in Chinese real estate. He is a trusted Expert for the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs of the P.R.C and a frequent teacher of Chinese officials (to date, some 90,000 of them) -- the very people charged with China s physical development. In a very real way, Jao s voice is heard throughout the PRC, and beyond. Here, for the first time in an English-language publication, Mr. Jao explains his winning bicultural approach to the planning of Chinese cities and, in broader scope, to the maturation of an evolving world power. He speaks with disarming forthrightness about everything from population density to controlled growth, the loss of urban identity, preservation, conservation, pollution, and the need to foster new attitudes about sustainability. In the name of modernization he introduces China to key quality of life issues and the concept of planning for the end-user. He ventures beyond the traditional limits of urban planning into education, intellectual property rights, and China s political and social systems, examining critical nuances that are misunderstood, or unknown, in the West. Jao takes the reader inside the joint practices of planning and architecture to examine land values and regional requirements and preferences; he boldly explores some of the more irksome questions surrounding originality, style, architecture as cultural expression, and the shifting relationship of architects, both East and West. He travels into the countryside, attends official government meetings, and studies the streets to reveal the policies and patterns of urban development, infrastructure, traffic, parks, and the whole notion of public space. Jao unblinkingly champions community involvement as a necessary component on planning as it is the end result of a shared-vision . By engaging the reader with wit and wisdom, Jao speaks in various turns as practitioner, teacher, critic, historian, diagnostician, and always a diplomat. He presents this very timely publication to advocate a central underlying premise of understanding and cooperation between East and West.¬¬