Typological Drift Emerging Cities in China

Neither derivatives of Western cities norisolated from them, Chinese cities in the past four decades are perhaps bestcaptured in their characteristic complexity through a concept in biologicalevolution: drift. Unlike mutation, adaptation, and migration, drift ofphenotypes takes place when chance events terminate some features and allowother features to flourish. The Chinese culture, structurally divergent fromthe common Indo-European civilizational roots of Western cultures, can be seento function as a set of "chance events" in the normative processes of urbanchange. The consequences of these "bottlenecks" of urban evolution are bothfascinating and instructive: Chinese cities, when studied with this framework, begin to acquire an entirely different order of significance, injecting urbantheory and practice with fresh vigor and insights. Through thirteen casestudies, more than 60 original maps and drawings, and extensive photographicdocumentation, the book reveals how three "drift triggers" - ten thousandthings, figuration, and group action - have altered typological development inChinese cities in recent decades.