Beijing Record: A Physical and Political History of Planning Modern Beijing
by Wang Jun
World Scientific, 512 pp., $58.00
Mao’s New World: Political Culture in the Early People’s Republic
by Chang-tai Hung
Cornell University Press, 352 pp., $39.95
Cities Surround the Countryside: Urban Aesthetics in Postsocialist China
by Robin Visser
Duke University Press, 362 pp., $89.95; $24.95 (paper)
The Forbidden City
by Geremie R. Barmé
Harvard University Press, 251 pp., $19.95
The Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution and What It Means for the World
by Thomas J. Campanella
Princeton Architectural Press, 334 pp., $24.95 (paper)
Remaking Beijing: Tiananmen Square and the Creation of a Political Space
by Wu Hung
University of Chicago Press, 272 pp., $35.00 (paper)
Over the past twenty years, urban planning in China has been the source of widespread social unrest, with tens of thousands of citizens banding together in class-action lawsuits against land expropriation. The government eventually banned such legal action, but the topic is still one of China’s most sensitive. Real estate prices have risen so much in major Chinese cities that ordinary people can at best afford an apartment in a suburban housing tower. On some days, it seems that all people talk about is housing and the problems of living in Chinese cities.
