Also concerning urban development,

How to build a city properly is discussed in a commentary published on China Daily.

Xiong Lei, a media consultant with the Global Environmental Institute, wrote in this article that with the fast pace of urbanization, many Chinese cities are blindly constructing clusters of skyscrapers like in the west. They are lost in trying to build similar urban landscapes and become identical cloned cities.

The author says every city should have its own character and soul. Some local decision-makers in China are blind to the cities' own treasures. They decide to demolish the cultural heritages to make way for novel things. As many historical streets have been razed to the ground, many Chinese can only find the unique identities of their cities in old pictures.

What worries the author is that as the rate of urbanization picks up in China, more skyscrapers, parking lots and highways will take away the souls of Chinese cities. The article says blindly copying western styles can only make the cities a mixture of something of everything.

The author also gives suggestions that decision-makers and designers of Chinese cities bear such worries in mind. They should learn from the culture and traditions of their own cities before they borrow from others' experiences.

If they fail to discover the city's original beauty with their own eyes, the article says, it is doubtful that hey can pick out anything valuable from elsewhere.