Customer Reviews

Modern Urban Housing in China: 1840-2000 (Architecture)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

'Modern Urban Housing' is a thorough history of housing in China, although there is a definite bias towards what ocurred in Shanghai and northern China. Except for editing and the conclusion by P. Rowe, this book was written entirely by mainland academics, so there is 'precise' statistic after statistic that ends up overloading the reader rather than helping to clarify and provide context. It also bogs the reading down and is not mitigated by their review of of China's contemporaneous political events wherein thay are seemingly writing so as not to offend the party overseers (although this is my own bias speaking). Since this is for westerners, this book would have been helped by a more active collaboration with a westerner from the beginning.

However, there is little else out there in English for people who would like to learn about this subject and the illustrations/photos are plentiful enough and serve to illuminate the writing.