Chinese New Towns

FULL, No Density, Samuele Pellecchia, Survey, Territory and mobility, Urban Paradigms

Beijing, China, Cities & Middle Density, City, Density, Ecological urbanism, Future Urban Legacy Lab, Global Awareness, Photographic Atlas of the Cities, Photography, Planetary urbanizations, Population, Survey, Tongzhou, Urban Legacy, Urban mobility, Urban Paradigms, Urban planning, Urban sprawl, Urbanisation

What is a new town? Looking from Chinese new towns, this question is unanswerable. The misunderstandings and opaqueness of the Chinese urbanisation process make both the new towns and our sight ambiguous. Entering the new towns force us to rediscuss simple narrations and old models. Walking through Tongzhou, Zhaoqing and Zhengdong, three new towns – designed, under construction and built – located in an old industrial district of the eastern suburban expansion of Beijing, on the edge of Guangdong Province in the Pearl River Delta global city-region and near Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan, allows to understand in which strong way the huge urbanisation process affecting contemporary China is at the same time complex and simplex, global and local, fascinating and astonishing.