Comments on: Creative destruction, or destructive creations? Part 1, out with the old? http://affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/2009/06/creative-destruction-or-destructive-creations-part-1-out-with-the-old.html Affordable Housing Institue Mon, 22 Feb 2010 01:10:03 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: sudarshan http://affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/2009/06/creative-destruction-or-destructive-creations-part-1-out-with-the-old.html/comment-page-1#comment-34959 sudarshan Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:39:46 +0000 http://affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/2009/06/creative-destruction-or-destructive-creations-part-1-out-with-the-old.html#comment-34959 it sounded a bit contradictory but....i still go with you. old monuments should be preserved. it sounded a bit contradictory but….i still go with you. old monuments should be preserved.

]]> By: Yousuf Marvi http://affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/2009/06/creative-destruction-or-destructive-creations-part-1-out-with-the-old.html/comment-page-1#comment-34923 Yousuf Marvi Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:15:21 +0000 http://affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/2009/06/creative-destruction-or-destructive-creations-part-1-out-with-the-old.html#comment-34923 The answer to your question--"what will rise in its [Kashghar's place], and why?"--is very simple. All one has to do is go to Shanghai or any major city on China's eastern coast and take a road trip to Yunan (China's most ethnically diverse province). All one will observe is tall building in an organized manner, all designed by Western architects, replacing and eating old Chinese architecture. To an unobservant tourist, this might seem a great feat of development; however, in reality, there is nothing culturally and aesthetically pleasing about this development. It’s like paying $1500 to go half way around the world to see a larger and bigger New York. Where there are no tall skyscrapers, but reconstruction of the old cities, the ethnic population has been completely marginalized. For example, Li Jiang, one of very famous tourist destinations in Yunan, China, has been completely commercialized. To a visitor, the city seems like a re-built Shoalin Temple; an escape from China’s busy and chaotic metropolises. However, an half an hour discussion with the local people will paint a different picture. The ethnic people have been limited to dancing in the bars as dolls and doing other menial jobs, such as taxi drivers (or worse, as sex workers). All the shops and businesses are owned by Han (ethnic majority) people. I wouldn’t be surprised if the fate of Kashghar is similar. I went to Xinjaing province, of which Kashghar is a city, in 1994. I would hate to see the beautiful place, culture, and its people replaced by another “new Li Jiang”--a systematic marginalization of people in the name of re-development/urbanization. There is nothing wrong with developing new urban centers on modern construction codes of safety--one can learn from the Malays. The problem with China is that it has blinded itself with an "objective" notion of economic development. Subjectivity and insightful intellectualism is absent from their discourse of the economic mobilization of its whole nation. The answer to your question–”what will rise in its [Kashghar's place], and why?”–is very simple. All one has to do is go to Shanghai or any major city on China’s eastern coast and take a road trip to Yunan (China’s most ethnically diverse province). All one will observe is tall building in an organized manner, all designed by Western architects, replacing and eating old Chinese architecture. To an unobservant tourist, this might seem a great feat of development; however, in reality, there is nothing culturally and aesthetically pleasing about this development. It’s like paying $1500 to go half way around the world to see a larger and bigger New York.

Where there are no tall skyscrapers, but reconstruction of the old cities, the ethnic population has been completely marginalized. For example, Li Jiang, one of very famous tourist destinations in Yunan, China, has been completely commercialized. To a visitor, the city seems like a re-built Shoalin Temple; an escape from China’s busy and chaotic metropolises. However, an half an hour discussion with the local people will paint a different picture.

The ethnic people have been limited to dancing in the bars as dolls and doing other menial jobs, such as taxi drivers (or worse, as sex workers). All the shops and businesses are owned by Han (ethnic majority) people. I wouldn’t be surprised if the fate of Kashghar is similar. I went to Xinjaing province, of which Kashghar is a city, in 1994. I would hate to see the beautiful place, culture, and its people replaced by another “new Li Jiang”–a systematic marginalization of people in the name of re-development/urbanization.

There is nothing wrong with developing new urban centers on modern construction codes of safety–one can learn from the Malays. The problem with China is that it has blinded itself with an “objective” notion of economic development. Subjectivity and insightful intellectualism is absent from their discourse of the economic mobilization of its whole nation.

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