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This is a unique historic moment in China. New cities are emerging and they have developed

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interesting and fantastically different
features than the cities that we know

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China has undergone a huge economic change in
the past three decades, not only

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expansions of cities but really
creations of new cities

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It is crucially important at this moment to bring
students from the University of Virginia

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to go to China to experience, develop insight, to prepare them for their careers as architects

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in a rapidly changing world

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It's like each of these cities
is a laboratory for experimenting with

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different modes of inhabitation, different
ways in which you can put this many

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people in one space and actually try to
resolve the tensions that inevitably

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emerge from that. I had read a lot about the
construction boom and

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I had never anticipated the effect that
construction has on the environment

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But it really influences the entire landscape and and the feel of these cities.

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We have reached a point where the number

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of people who live in cities are now
equal to the number of people who live in the

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countryside and that's a critical tipping
point and it's made our world an urbanized

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world rather than a rural world

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What is unique to the
UVA program at the School of Architecture

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is that it actually begins at a very
large urban scale instead of beginning

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with a small building design. UVA begins
trying to deal with as many problems as

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once and it really throws the student
into the deep end. It really tied into

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my personal interests in looking beyond
just a building, but how the building is a

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part of this much larger system

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We are living at a time when

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all small local decisions that are made
in relation to buildings and cities are

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connected to a very complex network of economic forces, political forces, and environmental foces

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Understanding of this force is essential to the future of human life on the planet