New Cities Atlas
In 1984, China was still in the earliest days of figuring out what it wanted to be. Deng Xiaoping had cracked the door open to foreign investment and market economics, but nobody quite knew how far the experiment would go or what it would produce. TEDA, the Tianjin Economic-Technological Development
New Cities Atlas
When China announced Xiong'an New Area in 2017, it didn't do so quietly. State media heralded it as the most significant new city project since Shenzhen, a comparison that, if you know what Shenzhen became, is either an extraordinary promise or an extraordinary act of hubris.
New Cities Atlas
Since 1970, China has undertaken the largest urbanization project in history, building cities for 760 million people, more than the total urban population of the world in 1950. This rapid expansion was driven by industrialization, economic reforms, and massive rural-to-urban migration. New cities like Shenzhen, once a fishing village, have