Villages in the City: A Guide to South China's Informal Settlements
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Countless Chinese villages have been engulfed by modern cities. They no longer consist of picturesque farms and feng shui groves, but of high-rise buildings so close to each other that they create dark claustrophobic alleys--jammed with dripping air-conditioners, hanging clothes, caged balconies and bundles of buzzing electric wires, and crowned with a small strip of daylight, known as "thin line sky." At times, buildings stand so close to another they are dubbed "kissing buildings" or "handshake houses"--you can literally reach out from one building and shake hands with your neighbor.
Although it is easy to see these villages as slums, a closer look reveals that they provide an important, affordable, and well-located entry point for migrants into the city. They also offer a vital mixed-use, spatially diverse and pedestrian alternative to the prevailing car-oriented modernist-planning paradigm in China. Yet, most of these villages are on the brink of destruction, affecting the homes of millions of people and threatening the eradication of a unique urban fabric. Villages in the City argues for the value of urban villages as places. To reveal their qualities, a series of drawings and photographs uncover the immense concentration of social life in their dense structures, and provide a peek into residents' homes and daily lives. Essays by a number of experts give a deeper understanding on the topic, and help imagine how reinstating the focus on the village could lead to a richer, more variegated pathway of urbanization.Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0824847563
ISBN13:9780824847562
Release Date:September 2014
Publisher:University of Hawaii Press
Length:216 Pages
Weight:0.95 lbs.
Dimensions:0.6" x 5.9" x 8.9"
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