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Chinese Exceptionalism in Architecture and Urban Design Wong

Journal of Chinese Architecture and Urbanism

2022 Volume 4 Issue 2: 1-8 Book Review

Chinese Exceptionalism in Architecture and Urban Design: A
Book Review

Kachun Alex Wong

John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto, Toronto,
Ontario, M5S 1A1, Canada

Corresponding author: Kachun Alex Wong, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and
Design, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1, Canada.
Email: kachunalex.wong@mail.utoronto.ca

Citation: Wong KA, 2022, Chinese Exceptionalism in Architecture and Urban Design: A Book
Review. Journal of Chinese Architecture and Urbanism, 4(2): 161.
http://dx.doi.org/10.36922/jcau.v4i2.161

ABSTRACT

This essay reviews three books on contemporary Chinese urbanism. The first book, Designing Reform,
understands the exceptionalism of Chinese reform through architectural evidence. The second book,
The Shenzhen Experiment, further argues for the exceptionalism and non-replicability of Shenzhen
reform. The third book, The City After Chinese New Towns, similarly highlights the unprecedentedness
of Chinese new towns. These three recent publications collectively aim to demystify contemporary
Chinese urbanism, and have done so with a sensibility towards space, geography, materiality, and
infrastructure. These authors and editors are mainly architectural researchers leveraging disciplinary
contributions to the discussion of post-socialist China. In turn, they have also contributed to the field of
architecture and urban design with rich case studies in China. This review essay aims to understand (i)
their geographical and spatial perspectives, (ii) their architectural design perspectives, and (iii) how
they address social justice issues. It seeks to formulate contemporary Chinese urbanization as an object
of inquiry, to “exceptionalize” Chinese phenomena, and to argue for the pedagogical contribution of
Chinese case studies to architecture and urban design.

Keywords: Chinese new town, reform and opening-up, political economy, hotel, neoliberalism,
Shenzhen

Copyright: © 2022 Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits all non-commercial use,
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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