Chinese cities, by design
One day last month, two students from the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) visited the home of a migrant worker on the outskirts of Xiamen, a fast-growing, Chinese coastal city. They sat on stools and drank tea and took in their surroundings: two bedrooms, an aged computer, and a tiny kitchen with a stove and small windows. “It felt bright and airy inside,” though the exterior was rudely built and starkly modern, said Sonja Cheng, M.Arch. ’14. “It was comfortable.” Her companion, Waqas Jawaid, M.Arch. ’14, described walking to the apartment, where seven people live. It was tucked inside a warren of narrow alleyways lined with little shops and near a shady oak tree where neighbors gathered. “Every open space had a value,” he said of the informal settlement. “Something was happening there.” The oak tree and everything else will soon be razed to make way for developments called mega-plots, assemblies of...