Crossing a street in Xi’an

All around the country, Chinese cities are expanding at great speeds. To speed up the process of urbanisation, city governments sell out enourmous pieces of land to developpers. The different plots are seperated by big, very big, roads. Not only are these very unpleasant to walk along, they are also difficult to cross, as our experiment in Xi’an’s new northern district shows. How livable will a city be when it consists only of these types of wide speedway-like avenues and no small alleys or even streets whatsover? Take a look at the video:

Proposal competition Drum Tower traditional district, Taiyuan

For the Drum Tower traditional district in Taiyuan the city government is planning a revitalization. A competition has been organized for the urban planning. In this movie you can see the proposal of one of the architects, Preston Scott Cohen, inc, who are also building a museum in the new city center. Bring your Mandarin phrasebook.

via TY Urban on Vimeo.