The Social Imperative

This book aims to put the social agenda squarely back in the rapid development of the built environment in China. Beneath the veneer of a very successful China, a quiet revolution is taking place within the realms of architecture and the city. This book contains multiple short critiques, reflections and manifestos, affording each contributing architect and intellectual the time and space to imagine new social paradigms in China. Emerging from a tumultuous history of high culture and complex territorial conditions, there is nothing straightforward about the social development of China. The complexity of the social practices developed by architects and shapers of the built environment can be explained in part by the last three decades of an intensified adoption of the market economy by the Communist Party of China, after an equally short three decades of closed-door communist control. There is no political meltdown like the democratization of the former Communist Bloc, but there is a constant managing of discontent and resistance across China. Auslieferung: DOM Publishers, Sabine Hofmann, Röthenweg 15, 96152 Burghaslach Germany, Tel. +49 9552 931012, Fax +49 9552 931011, E-Mail: sabine.hofmann@dom-publishers.com, Homepage: http://www.dom-publishers.com