Constructing Utopias: China's New Town Movement in the 21st Century

“Drawing on a good selection of the vast quantity of publications on these developments, Lin gives a useful bird’s-eye overview, while occasionally offering the perspectives of people who have settled in these spaces. He argues that China’s relatively late and rapid industrialization, combined with particular aspects of its political economy, has led to this surge in city building, and he expresses appreciation for the urban designers who have created remarkable spaces in very challenging conditions. Constructing Utopias is well illustrated with urban plans, artists’ renderings of future urban spaces, and many photographs of completed cityscapes. ..Recommended.” — K. E. Stapleton, CHOICE

“Zhongjie Lin’s Constructing Utopias: China’s New Town Movement in the 21st Century is a monumental work of scholarship which illuminates the successes-and the failures-of the new communities created by the Chinese government on formerly agricultural land, an initiative which Professor Lin rightly characterizes as utopian social engineering. Each of the case studies in this book is fascinating, and together they make up an important chapter in the history of planning, design, and development.” — Jonathan Barnett, FAIA, FAICP

“China’s new town movement represents one of the most ambitious urban experiments of the 21st century. In Building Utopias, Zhongjie Lin provides a compelling and richly documented account of how these projects embody both the aspirations and tensions of China’s rapid urbanization. This book offers valuable insights for anyone seeking to understand the future of cities in China and beyond.” — Daniel Z. Sui, Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation & Professor of Geography/International and Public Affairs, Virginia Tech

“Constructing Utopias: China’s New Town Movement in the 21st Century explores the audacious effort to build ideal futures from the ground up-cities imagined as engines and harmony, order, and progress. Yet embedded in the word “utopia” is its own paradox: from the Greek ou-topos, “no place,” it names both an aspiration and an impossibility. Zhongjie Lin’s study captures this tension between visionary idealism and the stubborn realities that render every constructed paradise provisional, fragile, and profoundly human.” — Frederick Steiner, Dean and Paley Professor, Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania

“Professor Lin’s Constructing Utopias is a deeply insightful and elegantly rendered account of China’s new town movement and its central role in urban transformation. With rich historical grounding and impressive analytical clarity, the book shows how new towns have become a powerful lens for understanding state-led development, migration, land politics, and the urban imaginaries shaping China’s future. It makes an important contribution not only to the study of China’s urbanization, but also to comparative urbanism and planning scholarship around the world.” — Yan Song, Professor and Director on Program of Chinese Cities, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Zhongjie Lin is the Benjamin Z. Lin Presidential Professor of Urban Design at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design, where he serves as Head of the Urban Design program and directs the Future Cities Initiative. He is a co-founder of Futurepolis, an award-winning interdisciplinary practice of planning and architecture. An internationally renowned expert in urbanism, Dr. Lin has published numerous books on the theory and practice of urban design, sustainable urbanism, planning history, and Asian architecture and cities. His work has been recognized by prestigious awards including a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship.