People's Architecture
	BIO  |  QUOTE   |  PRESENTATION     JOHN FRIEDMANN Perhaps the most dramatic (and surprising) story of China's transformation during the past twenty-five years has been how significant portions of the country's rural areas have become "urban" in the many meanings of this elusive term. Yu Zhu has referred to this process as in situ urbanization. (...) The result of these changes was the creation - it seems to have occurred almost overnight, but in fact it took more than two decades - of a new urban form in the two major delta regions, the multi-centric urban field, and of peri-urban areas in the immediate vicinity of medium-sized and large cities that would eventually become integrated with their urban cores. (...) is clear that under conditions of in situ urbanization, with the very high population densities that are involved, and under conditions of rapid economic expansion, people who only three decades ago were subsistence peasant can now enjoy a comfortable urban style of life. (...) In some parts of China, then, a new urban form is emerging, which I have called a multi-centric urban field. Despite its increasingly urban character, the multi-centric urban field still retains some of its rural qualities. Friedmann, John in China's Urban Transition (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2005)