29 December 2005

goldberger: rouse as radical?

CHECK OUT THIS WEEK'S New Yorker for a (typically) strange piece by Paul Goldberger on the Disneyfied "festival marketplace" of Shanghai's Xintiandi district. I don't really understand his logic here, but it seems to me as if Goldberger is trying to say that that the recent fascination with Rouse-ian kitsch in Shanghai somehow has radical architectural implications for the city. Is it radical simply because it is a different urbanistic approach than the standard Shanghai development? Does that simple difference discount the enormous amount of cultural and symbolic baggage that these festival marketplace-like developments bring along with them? Maybe someone can help me here... am I missing something?

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