I've refrained so far from commenting on the Beijing Olympics. Randy Alcorn has some excellent thoughts on the games and I read his novel Safely Home prior to the games. I highly recommend it! I share many of the sentements he expresses.
What I do want to think about at the moment is China's entry into the Syd Mead super-sized urban core and the loss of its neigborhoods. This News Story covers it very well. Japan has dealt with this phenomenom as it has seen old Kyoto's traditional houses fall to the wrecking ball.
Europe saw postwar reconstruction of monsterous blocks of sterile housing and America built urban renewal projects of the same genre. No longer did the life of the village surround the plaza. Now Paris, which survived Hitler and Le Corbusier, faces similar urban renewal as detailed Here in City Journal. Clearly the challenge of preserving the fabric of community is greater than ever.
The answer is probably over simplified by calling for replicating Nineteenth Century Main Street architecture. I could see some really lovely infusion of the work of Hugh Newell Jacobsen, for example. Jacobsen deftly manipulates pure form but he lives and works in Georgetown where there is a rich community fabric, which he appreciates. Also, there are places in Manhattan where the market for community spaces thrives amidst twenty story buildings.
Le Corbusier's vision for Paris
Seward Park is typical of American Urban Renewal Projects.
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