Record-breaking pollution levels in Beijing this winter are one visible symptom of the bind China has gotten itself into with its rapid urbanization and infatuation with the automobile. As China accelerates its urban development to accommodate an estimated 300 million people moving from the countryside to cities by 2020, it is turning to people like California architect and planner Peter Calthorpe to help it design better cities—and quickly.
“You have to recalibrate your brain when you work in China,” says Calthorpe. “It’s not like the U.S., where we take tiny little steps in redevelopment and then fight over them for the next 10 years. In China, you’ll see cities designed for one and two million people built from scratch in a few years. The question is: how do you turn that activity into something benign?”
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