1. Useful discussions of the trends in American city planning during the period immediately preceding Guangzhou’s experiments can be found in M. Scott, American City Planning Since 1900. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969, pp. 65-88; and W.H. Wilson, Moles and Skylarks, in D.A. Krueckeberg (ed), Introduction to Planning History in the United States. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers, 1983, pp. 88-9.
2. See, for example, P. Langdon, Asia bound. Progressive Architecture, 76 (March 1995) 43-51 ; T.J. Campanella, Visible city: Shanghai. Metropolis, 14 (March 1995) 33-40; and for a fascinating example in contemporary Chinese fiction of how some Chinese residents feel about recent demolitions of their neighbourhoods, see Sun Li and Yu Xiaohui, Dushi Fengliu (Metropolis). Beijing: Zhongguo Wenxue Chubanshe, 1992.
3. C. Maybon and J. Fredet, Histoire de la Concession Francaise de Shanghai. Paris: Librairie Plon, 1929; M. Sinclair, The French Settlement of Shanghai on the Eve of the Revolution of 1911. PhD. dissertation, Stanford University, 1973; F. Ged, Gestion du désordre et pathologie de croissance, in P. Clément, S. Clément-Charpentier and C. Goldblum (eds), Cités d’Asie. Paris: Editions Parenthe`ses, 1995, pp. 199-214; and T. Warner, German Architecture in China. Berlin: Ernst & Sohn, 1994. Russian-inspired transformations in Harbin, or Japanese planning schemes in Manchuria were also significant, but a full discussion of these plans lies outside the scope of this paper.
4. O. Zunz and D. Ward, (eds) The Landscape of Modernity: Essays on New York City, 1900- 1940. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1992. In their introduction (p.5) Zunz and Ward explain that, despite how confoundingly the word modern conveys ‘a myriad of loosely connected meanings’, the landscape of modernity was one in which there was an interrelation-ship between rationalism and pluralism. In the republican period, some Chinese urban administrators consciously sought the more rational and tangible trappings of modernity, while largely ignoring lessons associated with American pluralism. In the 1990s one might argue that similar complications still exist in China regarding rationalism and pluralism, as the country adopts a landscape of a more recent ‘modernity’, but is unsure how to deal with western-derived concepts such as pluralism.
5. J.D. Spence, The Search for Modern China. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Co., 1990, pp. 158 -62.