Wednesday, May 28

"Shanghai and Beijing ... have become urban riots of aesthetic and technical flair, with skylines that are futuristic, inspiring, and sometimes sublime. [However]... The bulk of construction in China is not of the showcase variety, with the celebrity Western architects jet-classed in for consultations and photo ops. Instead, the vast majority of recent building has been non-descript, cheap and almost entirely ungoverned by safety standards or minimum building codes."