Zibo | part II

September 16th, 2009 • cities, movingmemos

How to explore the unknown? What to expect from a city that one only knows from growth figures and population projections? Spending the morning zigzagging Zibo, along large avenues, run-down blue facades and rooftops, MovingCities captured impressions from the unimaginable.

Arriving in Zibo out of curiosity, we feared that this place could easily get reduced to a nonentity; another city on a city-list. Cities, that only by their name (Heze, Jiamusi, Taian,…) are prone to remain unknown and float in abstraction. Their quality is that they resisted, so far, the demand of architectural internationalization. Here large buildings consist out of hotels and the local headquarters of national companies. There is no bigness beyond them.

These cities are placed outside the urban observers’ fascination for megacities and the logic of the generic city.

Yes, Zibo could be anywhere. But only in China.

Pictures by movingcities.org

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• Beijing – Zibo | 北京 – 淄博 | MovingCities
• Zibo Part I | 淄博第一章 | MovingCities

tags: urbanism, zibo 淄博

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