A Swiss-style village, a Prague-like city, and other new urban places in China
Photo by Kevin Poh via Flickr. CC 2.0. This is the beginning of a story published by NOEMA, magazine of the Berggruen Institute.
In December 2021, on a forested hill at the edge of an expansive infrastructural development area called Gui’an New Area, the telecoms giant Huawei unveiled an 18th-century-style European town that looks quite a bit like Prague. Streets and boulevards are paved in white stone and lit by antique street lamps. Granite balustrades flank a double staircase that leads from the main square up to the “Rathaus” building, which overlooks concentric terraces of townhouses whose pastel facades and terracotta roofs are illuminated at night like a Germanic fairytale. A large moat, filled by a waterfall cascading down a craggy rock face, encircles the entire complex....
Read the rest at NOEMA.
