Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
[The Catskills] could become a lot flashier, thanks to [Sherry Li's] proposal for the area: a multibillion-dollar "China City of America," complete with an amusement park, mansions, a casino, retail centers, a college, and more. [...]
The Center for Immigration Studies wrote a comprehensive take-down of "China City," criticizing the project's potential for environmental disruption, dubious promise of job creation, and possible role as a stalking horse for the Chinese government.
— The Atlantic Cities
As a society slowly urbanizes over time, its psychology and culture change, too... If American culture and psychology grew more individualistic as the country urbanized, wouldn't that transformation be clear in the words from American books (and the concepts that lie behind them)? — The Atlantic Cities
Urban and rural environments impact personal psychology differently, according to research published by UCLA psychologist Patricia Greenfield in Psychological Science. While observational evidence may draw a clear line between current city- and country-mindsets, Greenfield's source material... View full entry
It is one of the most drastic displays of a concerted government effort to end the dominance of rural life, which for millenniums has been the keystone of Chinese society and politics....All told, 250 million more Chinese may live in cities in the next dozen years. The rush to urbanize comes despite concerns that many rural residents cannot find jobs in the new urban areas or are simply unwilling to leave behind a way of life that many cherish. — New York Times
“If you go into the hardcore urban or the hardcore rural, it is quite simple to define it, but that is not so relevant. It is more significant to talk about the condition in between. And this condition is extremely difficult to define.” – Urban planner Kees Christiaanse in conversation with Bernd Upmeyer and Beatriz Ramo on behalf of MONU Magazine — Free Association Design
MONU’s call for submissions for its latest issue (#16, Non Urbanism) asked its participants to “investigate how non-urbanism may be defined and identified today, and how non-urban areas interact with and relate to urban areas.“ Fortunately for readers, the printed... View full entry
For at least a century, governments have tried to urbanise their nations. Communist states sought to drag people out of what Marx and Engels called their "rural idiocy". Capitalist governments – Mahatir Mohammed's administration in Malaysia is a good example – tried to persuade and bully indigenous people into leaving the land (which then became available for exploitation) and move to the cities to join the consumer economy. Urbanisation was equated with progress and modernity. — George Monbiot, guardian.co.uk
