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* Full version now available online!

A Journey of Wonder in Shanghai
In China urbanisation is at full pace. New neighborhoods and cities emerge faster than ever before. The inhabitants, often coming from small villages or demolished areas in the city centres, find a new social context in the new cities. The apartments are better than what they were used to, but do they feel at home there? Do the new cities meet their inhabitants' expectations?

The 'new rich' can afford to buy a house in a new themed suburb. But the city centres of Thames Town or Holland Village look empty. These areas seem to be used mainly by frantic newlyweds searching the perfect surrounding for their wedding pictures.

Urbanisation In China: Happiness Is Seen Everywhere provides a background and context for the Chinese urbanisation and specifically lets the inhabitants speak. It is not a romantic picture of pretty old houses and alleys, but shows real situations and open often surprising views in modern China.

A jury of film critics and architects have awarded the film as "Best Documentary" at "The International Istanbul Architecture And Urbanism Film Festival" 2011. (title translated as Ã‡inâ€™de KentleÅŸme: Mutluluk Her Yerde). The prize consists of a statue and a cash prize of â‚¬ 4000.

Screened on film festivals in (a.o.) Shanghai, Frankfurt, Istanbul, Seoul and the Netherlands.

Released on DVD, published by Architectura & Natura

Camera, production, editing

DVD and Full-HD MP4

Supported by the Netherlands Architecture Fund

In cooperation with Urban Language

Extra on the DVD: 16 MM Mao Man

News items:

November 2012: Urbanisation in China is translated into Korean in order to be screened on the Seoul International Architecture Film Festival, Nov.8th / 14th 2012.

September 2012: Urbanisation in China will be screened on saturday 22 september 2012 in Frankfurt on the China in Motion Festival . I will do a Q&A after the screening.

October 2011: "Urbanisation in China" has been selected by a jury of film critics, directors and architects as best documentary at the Istanbul International Architecture and Urban Film Festival.

The screening of "Urbanisation in China" will be the final act of the Chinese Triptych exhibition @ Casla architecture institute, Almere. June 15, 8 pm. Free admission. See the website for details.Â

The film has been screened at the MiNi Film Festival in Shanghai (April 23 & 24, Dutch Design Workspace). Interviews and articles in Time Out Shanghai, Global Times, Smart Shanghai and Creative Hunt.
Thanks to all people who came to this great mini festival, the cinema room was just overcrowded. Special thanks to the people asking smart questions at the Q&A!

The DVD is "Book" of the month April at ArchiNed.

Screening in CASLA architecture centre (almere) during exhibition Chinees Drieluik: De alledaagse, Netwerk en Groene Newtown. From april 8 - june 20.

Radio interview CRTV about the film. Available as podcast.

Presentation of the DVD in Architectura & Natura, Amsterdam (3-3-2011). The DVD is for sale now!

A preview of the documentary was shown at the presentation of the book "Shanghai New Towns" (Harry den Hartog)(nov 30, 2010).

english / chinese - ISBN 978-94-614001-5-4
60 minutes + extra's. RRP 12,50 euro
extra on the DVD:16 MM Mao Man (short doc)

Send an email for more information (contact details on the right)

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Urbanisation in China; happiness is seen everywhere

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Full version now available online! A Journey of Wonder in Shanghai In China urbanisation is at full pace. New neighborhoods and cities emerge faster than ever before. The inhabitants, often coming from small villages or demolished areas in the city centres, find a new social context in the new cities.

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According to Professor Lu Dadao, president of the Geographical Society of China (GSC), China's urbanization took 22 years to increase to 39.1% from 17.9%. It took Britain 120 years, the US 80 years, and Japan more than 30 years to accomplish this.[9]

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Only in China would a documentary on air pollution garner more than 100 million views in less than 48 hours.

Renowned investigative journalist Chai Jing has been widely praised for using her own money - more than 1 million RMB ($159,000: £103,422) - to fund the film, called Under the Dome. She first started the documentary when her infant daughter developed a benign tumour in the womb, which Ms Chai blames on air pollution.

Standing in front of an audience in a simple white shirt and jeans, Ms Chai speaks plainly throughout the 103-minute video, which features a year-long investigation of China's noxious pollution problem.

At times, the documentary is deeply personal. Near the start of the documentary, Ms Chai interviews a six-year-old living in the coal-mining province of Shanxi, one of the most polluted places on earth.

"Have you ever seen stars?" Ms Chai asks. "No," replies the girl.

"Have you ever seen a blue sky?" "I have seen a sky that's a little bit blue," the girl tells her.

"But have you ever seen white clouds?" "No," the girl sighs.

'Work before the environment'

At other points, the documentary is deeply critical of the state's lax environmental laws. In one instance, Ms Chai follows a government inspector to measure the illegal pollutants coming from a coal-burning steel producer in central Hebei province.

Months later, she discovers the steel maker had yet to pay any fines.

When she asks a provincial official why the coal-burning factories cannot be shut down, the answer is astonishingly blunt.

"It just doesn't work to sacrifice employment for the environment," Ms Chai is told.

Sources at Chinese state television CCTV, Ms Chai's former employer, confirmed the documentary was shot independently, but she had support from producers inside CCTV.

The original documentary was four hours long but another collaborator, tech entrepreneur Luo Yonghao, told her to cut it down to its current 103-minute length, the CCTV sources said.

BBC China Blog

The BBC China blog is where our teams across the country will provide a flavour of their latest insights.

We'll focus on the new and newsworthy, but also use our journalists' expertise to shine fresh light on China's remarkable transformations and upheavals.

Most of the posts will be written or filmed by journalists in our main bureau, in Beijing, or in our other bases in Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Please let us know what you think and send us your ideas. You can also use #BBCChinablog to keep up to date with our reports via Twitter.
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However, it is clear that she also worked to gain government approval for the documentary before its release. In an interview with the People's Daily, a major state media outlet, Ms Chai notes that she sent the documentary script and interviews to the National People's Congress - China's parliament - and the government office working on China's new oil and gas laws. Both teams offered comments and feedback, she says.

One of Ms Chai's collaborators, an investigative journalist named Yuan Ling, told a Chinese news site that he viewed an earlier version of the documentary that questioned China's "development model".

"I think this is very hard to discuss and there is no need to worry about things that should be considered by a prime minister," Mr Yuan said. He told her to eliminate that section, which was absent from the final version of the documentary.

Igniting debate

China's government leaders will appear to be very responsive to the concerns raised by Under the Dome.

Chai Jing's documentary was released on 28 February, less than a week before China's annual parliamentary session begins. China's central government is expected to pass an ambitious new law that hopes to impose tough new regulations on China's coal-burning polluters.

But in China, passing a law is one thing. Enforcing it is another.

Beijing could certainly use public pressure in its bid to carry out the new rules. Laws from the central government are commonly ignored by lower level officials, particularly when they might affect economic growth.

China named its new Environment Minister, Chen Jining, one day before the documentary was released. In his first press conference the day after his appointment, he noted he had already watched the documentary and had phoned Chai Jing to thank her for contribution.

Ms Chai and her collaborators declined interview requests from the BBC. Sources at CCTV explained the team were wary of the foreign media. After all, their Chinese-language documentary had already reached its intended target, the vast audience inside China.

Perhaps it does not matter who supported Ms Chai's documentary before it was made. Certainly, it has ignited a national debate across China, with millions stopping to pay attention to an issue that has been lingering in the air for years.

"My home is less than 5km [three miles] away from my office," reads a typical comment, one of millions of responses. "Starting today, I will not drive to work except on special occasions. I salute Chai Jing and I will do my small part to help."

Ms Chai now occupies a rare place inside China - someone with the moral authority to speak publicly against government policy, even if she must first gain their tacit approval.

Perhaps we should have suspected Ms Chai was bound for a rare perch in China all along.

"A country is built upon individuals; she is constructed and determined by them," she said in a speech to the Beijing Journalists' Association in 2009.

"It is only if a country has people who seek truth, who are capable of independent thinking, who can record the truth, who build but do not take advantage of the land, who protect their constitutional rights, who know the world is imperfect but who do not slacken or give up - it is only if a country has this kind of mind and spirit that we can say we are proud of our country.

"It is only if a country can respect this kind of mind and spirit that we can say that we believe tomorrow will be a better day."

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Under the Dome: The smog film taking China by storm

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Only in China would a documentary on air pollution garner more than 100 million views in less than 48 hours. Renowned investigative journalist Chai Jing has been widely praised for using her own money - more than 1 million RMB ($159,000: £103,422) - to fund the film, called Under the Dome.

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On a good morning, from my Beijing tower block, I could gaze across the city to the hills far to the west. On the worst days, when pollution levels soared off the scale, I could barely make out the buildings across the road. The air purifiers in each room were turned up to 11. The filters inside were supposed to last for six months - but after just a couple of months, the pristine white folds had usually turned charcoal grey.

Even with a mask, 20 minutes outside could leave you feeling nauseous. Friends complained of sore throats and coughs that never went away. It was a running, though unamusing, joke: Airmageddon. The airpocalypse. Beige-jing. But it got inside your head as well as your system. After a spate of especially bad days, my spirits lowered. I longed to see the sky.

And then one spring I returned home for a holiday, and turned the corner at the Peak District's Surprise View, one of the loveliest I know. Below me lay the Hope Valley, and, to my horror, the smog lay thick in its bottom. It took me a moment to recognise my error. Pollution had become so normal to me that, even at a place I knew so well, and had seen shrouded so often, it had not occurred to me that it was just mist.

In primary school my teacher had described climbing up to the hills as a child, and being unable to see Sheffield thanks to the blanket of smog. So many years after the Clean Air Act, it had been unimaginable to us. Now I took toxic air as the norm, like so many in China. I rolled my eyes when headlines shouted about the UK's air pollution crisis in April 2014. It was, by Beijing's standards, a pretty clear day.

Now I live in London again and note each morning how good it feels to breathe clean air. But I've noticed, too, how unpleasant it can be to walk along Euston Road. And I've started to ask myself why I've regarded illegal levels of pollution as acceptable. It is hard to see how our own attitudes - what we notice, what we tolerate - shift and how dependent this is on the views of people around us. To begin with, I took Beijing's bad days for granted. I lived there for five years before getting purifiers. No one liked the filthy air: but most residents regarded it as inevitable, like bad weather. Masks were seen as at best an eccentricity, at worst an indulgent affectation. The only Chinese people who wore them were warding off infections or trying not to spread them.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly when things changed. The research was piling up - scary data on the long-term health impacts: early deaths, heart and lung problems, cancer, diabetes, birth defects. So was the anecdotal evidence: toddlers who developed terrible asthma; the previously healthy friend who found himself waking in the night, struggling to breathe. Soon we were checking an air pollution app each morning, and discussing air purifiers and masks as petrolheads might compare sports cars. Private schools acquired inflatable domes so pupils could exercise without going outside.

We could afford to do this. Whether in Birmingham, Beijing or Delhi, pollution disproportionately affects the poor. They are more likely to live in heavily polluted areas (near factories or main roads, say) and are by definition less able to afford even partial remedies. But no one can escape the problem entirely.

Politburo members also looked out on a wall of grey, and presumably their sisters and sons were complaining, and their grandchildren too were racked by coughs. In 2015, hundreds of millions of people watched the documentary Under the Dome, which laid out the impact of pollution on China in frightening detail. It was a turning point in public awareness - and strikingly, while it was eventually censored, it had received at least partial official backing. Some within the leadership had realised that it had to take action, even if there is still a very long way to go.

That British problems are less severe does not mean we can afford to ignore them. The impact of nitrogen dioxide levels on our health, and especially that of our children, whose developing lungs are so much more vulnerable, is undeniable. The high court has twice judged the government's response to air pollution as being illegally poor.

Measures such as masks and purifiers may help individuals and even save lives. But they are not enough. The true significance of their adoption in China was that they showed people were recognising the problem. Their popularity helped to reinforce the sense that such concerns were sensible and pressing rather than peculiar or trivial. The real solutions are social - taken by city leaders, national governments and international bodies. But they will act only when the rest of us decide we have had enough.
Topics

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Air pollution made Beijing unbearable. Britain should watch and learn | Tania Branigan

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On a good morning, from my Beijing tower block, I could gaze across the city to the hills far to the west. On the worst days, when pollution levels soared off the scale, I could barely make out the buildings across the road. The air purifiers in each room were turned up to 11.

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he region where the Pearl River flows into the South China Sea has seen some of the most rapid urban expansion in human history over the past few decades - transforming what was mostly agricultural land in 1979 into what is the manufacturing heartland of a global economic superpower today.

In 2008, China announced plans to mesh Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan, Zhaoqing, Foshan, Huizhou, Jiangmen, Zhongshan and Zhuhai into a single megacity. A series of massive infrastructure projects are under way to merge transport, energy, water and telecoms networks across the nine cities. Development has been relentless, and the World Bank recently named the Pearl River Delta as the biggest urban area in the world in terms of population and geographical size.

A 30-mile-long bridge and tunnel is under construction to join the Pearl River Delta metropolis of Zhuhai to the special administrative regions of Macau and Hong Kong.

The first satellite image above shows the Pearl River Delta in 1979. Click or tap on the image (or drag the blue button) to see the second (taken in 2000), which shows that vast swathes of farmland have turned from green to grey, and huge new areas of land reclaimed from the sea.

Hong Kong

1980 population: 4.6 million; 2015 population: 7.3 million

The autonomous territory, which was handed back to China by Britain in 1997 after 99 years, has more skyscrapers than any other region in the world. The high-density city has reclaimed many square miles of land from the sea, as can be seen from the shifted shoreline in the newer photograph.

The photograph above shows Hong Kong harbour in 1971 and again in 2015.

Hong Kong's Kowloon peninsula, with the central area in the distance, as seen from the peak of Fei Ngo Shan in 1964, and again in 2016.

Shenzhen

1980 population: 58,000; 2015 population: 10.7 million

The staggering growth of Shenzhen can be seen in the photograph taken from Hong Kong's Crest Hill in 1964, and retaken in 2015. Lowu border crossing is in the bottom right of image.

Above, Shennan Road, a major east-west thoroughfare in Shenzhen, in 1985 and 2015.

Shenzhen's Splendid China Folk Village theme park, above, in 1991 and again in 2015. The park still contains miniature replicas of China's greatest tourist sites - from the Great Wall to the Forbidden Palace, both of which are visible here - but the residential area in the background has been transformed.

Guangzhou

1980 population: 1.9 million; 2015 population: 12.5 million

The port of Guangzhou is the third largest city in China, and the biggest in the Pearl River Delta.

The first image shows Guangzhou city centre in 1949, with the spires of its Sacred Heart cathedral prominent above surrounding rooftops. By 2015, when the second image was taken, the Roman Catholic church had been hidden by new towers.

The images above show Guangzhou's central Dongfeng Road in 1999 and again in 2015.

Guangzhou South Avenue, looking towards the river, in 1991 and again in 2015.

1980 population: 243,000; 2015 population: 584,000

Since the Portuguese legalised gambling in Macau in the 1850s, the city has developed into the "Monte Carlo of the Orient". It is the only place in China where casinos are legal, and millions of visitors flood in every year from the mainland and Hong Kong, which has helped Macau overtake Las Vegas as the world's biggest generator of gambling revenue.

Macau's Governor Nobre de Carvalho bridge, with the rotunda of the Casino Lisboa seen on the waterfront just to the right, in 1991. The second image, from 2016, shows the giant Grand Lisboa hotel and casino skyscraper towering above.

These images show Macau's coastline seen from Penha Hill in 1964, and again in 2016.

Credits
Photo credits: Satellite image - 1979 and 2000 by Landsat/Nasa/UIG/Getty Images; Hong Kong harbour - 1971 by Bruce Dale/NG/Getty Images and 2015 by Lucien Long for the Guardian; Hong Kong from Fei Ngo Shan - 1964 by Michael Cussans/Gwulo and 2016 by Alex Hofford for the Guardian; Shenzhen from Crest Hill -1964 image courtesy of David McLeod and 2015 by Lucien Long; Shen Nan Da Dao in Shenzhen - 1985 by An Ke/Fotoe and 2015 by Alex Hofford; Shenzhen's Splendid China Folk Village - 1991 by An Tu/Fotoe and 2015 by Alex Hofford; Guangzhou city centre - 1949 by Carl Mydans/Getty Images and 2015 by Alex Hofford; Guangzhou Dongfeng Road - 1999 by Chen Zhiqiang/Fotoe and 2015 by Alex Hofford; Guangzhou South Avenue -1991 by Zeng Zhi/Fotoe and 2015 by Alex Hofford; Macau from Governor Nobre de Carvalho bridge - 1991 by Patrick Zachmann/Magnum and 2016 by Wong Kantai for the Guardian ; Macau from Penha Hill - 1964 by Archive Photos/Getty Images and 2016 by Wong Kantai Population data: UN World Urbanisation Prospects

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The great leap upward: China's Pearl River Delta, then and now

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The Pearl River Delta has witnessed the most rapid urban expansion in human history - a predominantly agricultural region transformed into the world's largest continuous city.

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Today, China has more kilometers of high-speed rail than the rest of the world combined. WSP contributed to the construction of the world's largest HSR system.

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The pace of urbanization in China from 1949 to 1982 was relatively slow because of both rapid growth of the rural population and tight restrictions on rural-urban migration for most of that period. According to the 1953 and 1982 censuses, the urban population as a percentage of total population increased from 13.3 to 20.6 percent during that period.

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Scannable Document on 3 Oct 2017, 21_07_14.pdf