In the early 1980s, China launched the greatest building boom in human history, beginning a period of wholesale construction and destruction unlike anything the world has ever seen. There were fewer than 200 cities in China in the late 1970s; today there are nearly 700. While the United States has 9 cities with more than a million residents, China now has 102 such cities. And in a single decade more Chinese families have been displaced by redevelopment than by 30 years of urban renewal in the United States. The scale of this urban revolution is breathtaking: China is now home to the largest malls on earth, the biggest airport, many of the planet's tallest buildings and longest bridges, the biggest gated community, and even the world's largest skateboard park. China's rich urban architectural legacy is being sacrificed to make way for icons of progress and modernity.
The Concrete Dragon examines the forces behind this urban revolution and traces both the historical precedents and the increasingly globalized information, ideas, and trends that have combined to create a new Chinese landscape. Of course, this new urban day is not without costs. China's roaring economy is stoked by the labor of millions of men and women from rural provinces who flock to the booming coastal cities in search of work, and the toll on the environment, in China and around the world, is high. The Concrete Dragon provides a timely, critical overview of China's present as well as a comparison to previous periods of rapid urbanization elsewhere in the world-especially that of the United States, a nation that once itself set global records for the speed and scale of its urban ambitions.
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