Shanghai

by Alan Balfour

The World Cities Series stems from the vital need to consider our urban environment in the early part of the twenty-first century. This series offers you a detailed and intelligent analysis of the state of the world's most prominent cities and their visions of the future. Each book is full of comprehensive essays, illustrations and architectural projects.

Shanghai offers a captivating overview of one of the world's most fascinating cities. Documenting its historical development as well as its future promise, Alan Balfour and Zheng Shiling present insights from leading politicians, planners and architects. The book details the dynamics behind the city's phenomenal growth, the impact on its infrastructure and built environment, as well as the subtleties of dealing with existing cultural restrictions.
- The latest volume in the Academy World Cities series.
- An all encompassing view on this amazingly complex city.
- The book's four sections cover Shanghai's past, present, future, and how it might have been.
- Each section is lavishly illustrated and includes contributions from prominent players in the life of Shanghai.

368 pages, Hardcover

First published May 10, 2002

About the author

Alan Balfour (b. 1939) is a Scottish architect and author. He attended the Royal High School and Edinburgh College of Art. He won the Edinburgh Corporation Medal for Civic Design in 1961 and attended Princeton University as a Fulbright Scholar. He an Emiritus Professor of Architecture and has lived in America for more than forty years.

His books include New York (2001) and Shanghai (2002), in the World Cities series published by Wiley/Academy, London. They offer critical histories of city character and form as defined by architecture. The first in the series, Berlin, published by Academy Editions in 1995, documents the transformation of Berlin before and after the bringing down of the Wall. This and his earlier Berlin: The Politics of Order, 1737 - 1989 (Rizzoli, 1990), received AIA International Book Awards. Other ooks include Portsmouth (Studio Vista, 1970), Rockefeller Centre: Architecture as Theater (McGraw-Hill, 1978).

Balfour was e;ected Chairman of the Architectural Association in London in 1991. He was Dean of the School of Architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and was the 2000 Topaz Laureate, the highest recognition given in North America to an academic in architecture.