As is obvious to anyone with even a passing interest in demographics, cities are becoming denser—much denser. Rural life continues its steady emptying-out as urban life accelerates its explosive filling-in. The tilt has been apparent at least since the middle of the last century when the French geographer Jean Gottmann invented the word “megalopolis” to describe the continuous urbanization from Boston to Washington, D.C., then containing one-fifth of the United States’ population. But nowhere has the shift from countryside to city been more dramatic than in present-day Asia.
The rise of Asian cities has been meteoric, in ways catastrophic, in ways exquisite, and in every instance bigger, denser, and taller than their western counterparts. This reality is the subject of a new book (published by the A+D Museum and Harvard South Asia Institute) and exhibition (on view at the Helms Design Center in Culver City through March 12), both titled deCoding Asian Urbanism.
