A Simulacra of Place

How does architecture reflect the process of a country’s urbanization? How does urbanization influence the development of architecture? With these two questions, in the special case of China, this book will observe and discuss an abnormal architectural phenomenon—the “duplitecture” phenomenon in which entire townships appear to have been airlifted from their historic and geographic foundations in Europe and the Americas and spot-welded to Chinese cities. This phenomenon will then be utilized as a magnifying lens to reflect the process of urbanization in the New China and to question the future of the “Chinese Dream.”