The Chinese Cosmopolitan City
Often perceived as a
cultural singularity, China has a long history of multicultural realities both
from northern and western frontiers (Xiongnu, Xianbei, Qiang, Mongol, Manchu)
and from eastern seashore (Maritime trade); a twelfth-century document, Records of Foreign Peoples (zhufanzhi) lists 158 foreign places all
the way to Tunisia, Libya, Alexandria, southern Spain (Almoravid dynasty), as
well as 247 exotic products. This research aims to articulate a Chinese
cosmopolitanism and an urbanism associated with it. Taking contemporary cities
such as Yiwu and Quangzhou as case studies, we examine how both ancient and
contemporary multicultural urban features differ from those formed by the
pressure of resource extraction and colonization in Europe and America.
The Chinese Cosmopolitan City
2020
The Chinese Cosmopolitan City
2019
Service Space
Presentations
2020
Shiqiao Li and Esther Lorenz, “The Chinese Cosmopolitan City”, speakers
and panelists, Southern China Metropolis:
The Urbanism of the Greater Bay Area, NYIT-Tsinghua University Symposium 2009
Esther Lorenz, “Service Space”, paper presentation, 4th Conference of the International Forum on Urbanism (IFoU), Delft, Netherlands, Organizer: IFoUCollaborations
School of Architecture, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou
School of Architecture, China Academy of Fine Art, Hangzhou