久久亚洲国产成人影院-久久亚洲国产的中文-久久亚洲国产高清-久久亚洲国产精品-亚洲图片偷拍自拍-亚洲图色视频

Make me your Homepage
left corner left corner
China Daily Website

Invisible cities inspire tuned urbanization

Updated: 2013-10-10 07:24
By Zhu Yuan ( China Daily)

In Invisible Cities by Italian novelist Italo Calvino, Marco Polo tells Kublai Khan stories about 55 cities he visited and the dialogue between the Italian traveler and Chinese emperor touches upon a wide range of topics, mostly in prose form. The two men seem to take different meanings from what the other is saying.

I never read Calvino's poetic book, first published in 1972. But Chinese novelist Xue Yiwei's book, Traveling Along With Marco Polo - Thoughts about Invisible Cities, an interpretation of Calvino's novel, provided me with some insight.

What I find is both strange and interesting is the fact that Marco Polo, as a traveler, talks about cities with an emperor who led his nomadic cavalry to conquer a large part of Asia and Europe. Kublai Khan was definitely not an urban man and in Xue's interpretation, the 55 cities are ones of lust, power and violence, more in keeping with what the emperor envisages.

I appreciate Xue raising Marco Polo's division of cities into two types: those that stay in harmony with desire and those that split with desire. The former does a good job in meeting urban dwellers' demands for a better life and creates a demand for consumption among residents. Two different fates await cities that split with desire. One makes cities centers of greed and material gain by giving free rein to people's lust for whatever they want instead of whatever they need. The other possible fate is inertia where over-development stifles rather than fosters.

I wonder if an association can be established between Calvino's cities and Xue's interpretation, and the current urbanization in China.

If urbanization is an inevitable process for a country's development, leaders' understanding of what kind of city urban dwellers should have makes a great difference to whether the process will be conducive to the country's long-term sustainable development.

It is impossible for local leaders to have the fired-up imagination of Calvino, who died in 1985 aged 61, concerning the cities. But it is possible, and within their discretion, for them to harbor the notion that urban development should be for the benefit of urban dwellers.

Rather than Calvino, who let his imagination run as wild as possible in describing the cities Marco Polo talks about to Kublai Khan, local leaders, along with urban designers, must take into consideration various factors that should help make a city a pleasant place for residents to enjoy life. They must think about the adequate size of a city for its ecological capacity, the number of parks and the proportion of green areas and, of course the less poetic aspects, such as waste disposal and sewage.

I wonder whether there should be both a visible city and invisible one in the minds of local leaders. An invisible city should be an ideal place where people can enjoy the merits of a city without the congestion, or other drawbacks. A visible city will always benefit from the visions of its invisible twin.

In other words, an invisible city is the ideal of urban planners and policymakers while the visible one is where its invisible counterpart has to be materialized. If the former gets the better of the latter, construction of a city may likely be impeded by too much concern for problems that will compromise the quality of urban life. Of course, there is also the possibility of going too far beyond the capacity of the physical conditions in the process of making the ideal come true.

Given the urban development plans quite a number of cities have unveiled, it seems that a visible city has got the better of its invisible counterpart or else local urban planners did not have an invisible city in their mind.

That too much concern has been placed on the size of a city and on the prospects of developing certain types of cities (such as world city, first-class provincial capital and so on) speaks volumes for what they have in mind.

When wider roads, higher buildings and huge squares within an increasingly larger-sized city are seen as the priorities for urban development, I strongly doubt whether urban planners have an ideal in mind for a desirable urban life for its dwellers.

The downside of such urbanization has been looming large. The larger a city is, the more chances are for various kinds of jobs that make them attractive only in terms of money-making, but at the same time, they have more problems such as traffic jams.

Striking a balance between a visible city and an invisible one may be a way for urban planners to redefine the urbanization road map to the sustainability of cities and benefits of urban dwellers.

 
8.03K
 
...
主站蜘蛛池模板: 看真人视频a级毛片 | 国产国产人免费视频成69堂 | 美女又黄又免费的视频 | 在线亚洲欧美日韩 | 三级大片在线观看 | 国产成人精品一区二三区在线观看 | 男人桶女人逼 | 狠狠干香蕉 | 美女毛片在线看 | 国产伦精品一区二区三区无广告 | 久久精品操 | 精品亚洲视频在线观看 | 美女被躁免费视频软件 | 国产中文久久精品 | 一级毛片无毒不卡直接观看 | 91久久99热青草国产 | 毛片免费观看成人 | 日本一二线不卡在线观看 | 国产亚洲一路线二路线高质量 | 91精品欧美一区二区综合在线 | 欧美一级aⅴ毛片 | 毛片一级免费 | 色综合久久久久 | 久久国内免费视频 | 国产午夜毛片一区二区三区 | 久久精品国产6699国产精 | 欧美成人免费tv在线播放 | 亚洲天堂一区 | 在线中文 | 亚洲美女一级片 | 在线播放精品一区二区啪视频 | 国内自拍欧美 | 久草在线观看资源 | 男女无遮挡拍拍拍免费1000 | 亚洲国产精品免费在线观看 | 欧美a欧美1级| 亚洲一级毛片免观看 | 国产成人精品视频免费 | 精品国产高清a毛片 | 成人伊人青草久久综合网 | 国产日韩高清一区二区三区 |