{"product_id":"9780824847562-secondhand-villages-in-the-city-a-guide-to-south-chinas-informal-settlements","title":"Villages in the City: A Guide to South China's Informal Settlements","description":"Countless Chinese villages have been engulfed by modern cities. They no longer consist of picturesque farms and feng shui groves, but of high-rise buildings so close to each other that they create dark claustrophobic alleys - jammed with dripping air-conditioners, hanging clothes, caged balconies and bundles of buzzing electric wires, and crowned with a small strip of daylight, known as \"thin line sky.\" At times, buildings stand so close to another they are dubbed \"kissing buildings\" or \"handshake houses\" - you can literally reach out from one building and shake hands with your neighbor. Although it is easy to see these villages as slums, a closer look reveals that they provide an important, affordable, and well-located entry point for migrants into the city. They also offer a vital mixed-use, spatially diverse and pedestrian alternative to the prevailing car-oriented modernist-planning paradigm in China. Yet, most of these villages are on the brink of destruction, affecting the homes of millions of people and threatening the eradication of a unique urban fabric. Villages in the City  argues for the value of urban villages as places. To reveal their qualities, a series of drawings and photographs uncover the immense concentration of social life in their dense structures, and provide a peek into residents' homes and daily lives. Essays by a number of experts give a deeper understanding on the topic, and help imagine how reinstating the focus on the village could lead to a richer, more variegated pathway of urbanization.","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49193630662875,"sku":"9780824847562-SECONDHAND","price":15.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/f47c5197-5dc8-4ce4-a41f-deb71901b9fc.jpg?v=1787934671","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/9780824847562-secondhand-villages-in-the-city-a-guide-to-south-chinas-informal-settlements","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}