Villages in the City A Guide to South China's Informal Settlements
| Other author | Al, Stefan |
| Format | Electronic |
| Publication Info | New York : Columbia University Press Chichester : John Wiley & Sons, Limited [Distributor] |
| Description | 224 p. ill 09.000 x 06.000 in. |
| Supplemental Content | Full text available from Ebook Central - Academic Complete |
| Subjects |
| Summary | Annotation Countless Chinese villages have been engulfed by modern cities. They no longer consist of picturesque farms and fengshui 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 each other 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 the dense structures, and provide a peek into residents' homes and daily lives. Essays by a number of experts offer a deeper understanding of the topic, and help imagine how reinstating the focus on the village could lead to a richer, more variegated pathway of urbanization. |
| Access restriction | Available only to authorized users. |
| Technical details | Mode of access: World Wide Web |
| Genre/form | Electronic books. |
| ISBN | 9789888208234 |
| ISBN | 9888208233 (Trade Paper) Active Record |
| Standard identifier# | 9789888208234 |
| Stock number | 00006325 |