NYU New Cities Conference - Juan Du: "The Shenzhen Experiment: Demystifying China’s 'Instant City'"

The Shenzhen Experiment: Demystifying China’s “Instant City”
Juan Du is the Dean of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto and the author of The Shenzhen Experiment: The Story of China’s Instant City. She presents on Shenzhen’s history and development, and the role the city played in China’s growth. She argues that despite the perception of Shenzhen as a successful case of top-down planning, it better embodies the benefits of local governance and bottom-up urbanization.
On March 11th, the Charter Cities Institute (CCI) and the Marron Institute of Urban Management co-hosted the NYU New Cities Conference in New York City. The event brought together economists, political scientists, architects, and urbanists to discuss the challenges of and solutions to Africa’s rapid urbanization. Africa will see over a billion new residents move into its cities by 2050-the equivalent of 100 megacities -and without innovative solutions, its cities will struggle to translate population growth into economic prosperity.Concerned with growing pressures on already overburdened infrastructure and public services, many policymakers are turning to an ambitious idea: rapid urban expansion and the construction of new master planned cities from scratch. The conference aimed to discuss how new cities, charter cities, and urban expansion will impact Africa’s urban future.