The following line is a very enlightening interview with a Shanghai planner Zhang Song about China’s rapid urbanization:

http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/3722

I have picked out some of the best quotes.  

China is currently urbanising very rapidly – the number of urban dwellers isapproaching half of the country’s total population and there is a significant rural population that is temporarily resident in cities. Despite China’s massive efforts, there are still many problems with cities of all sizes, even in the “New Villages”. There’s a real need for an examination of how urbanisation in China should proceed. 

China’s cities are becoming ever less habitable, there’s no debate about that. It’s due to overdevelopment of urban areas… large scale rebuilding programmes have transformed the appearance of old cities. For years we neglected preservation of older areas, and so the environment declined and facilities decayed. China’s approach to development is also extremely backward. Developers take a piece of land they believe will be profitable and then completely rebuild it as they see fit…

If the government’s main function cannot shift toward the social – concentrating on things such as housing provision – then it will be led by the market. Currently, a completely commercialised mode of development is gaining strength and the quality of urban spaces is declining. And, of course, the government makes no small income from land development. 

A city isn’t a mechanical thing, but an organic life form with history and culture that needs to grow… but China views cities as machines to be dismantled and put together at will

“Zhang Song is professor and PhD supervisor at Tongji University’s College of Architecture and Urban Planning. In 1996, Zhang was awarded a PhD in urban design and historical preservation from the University of Tokyo. He is also a member of the China Urban Planning Association’s Historical Culture Preservation Committee and Shanghai Building Association’s Historical Building Preservation Committee”