Beijing Inventing Itself
The iconic landmarks and essential character of a city may be constructed within extremely brief, intensive leaps of development, taking place in an amazingly short period of time…
Writing in Vanity Fair, Kurt Andersen compares early 21st century Beijing with turn-of-the-20th-century New York:
…What early-21st-century Beijing…deeply resembles is New York at the turn of the 20th century. That’s the moment at which modern New York was inventing itself by showstopping leaps and bounds—swallowing adjacent cities and towns and farms, booming in population, and erecting what would become its defining landmarks…
