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The delta has attracted millions of poor rural residents to settle in factory towns in hopes for a better life. Factory Towns of South China opens a window on these walled compounds, exposing the gritty establishments, crowded dormitories and monotonous labor carried out by workers. Some function as self-contained cities, with their own fire brigade, hospital, bank, TV station and as many as half a million workers living within the compounds. Other factories are scattered in larger villages to mask their existence and evade governmental crackdowns on the production of fake consumer goods and illegal casino machines.  Contributors include David Bray, Minnie Chan, Jia-Ching Chen, Paul Chu Hoi Shan, Eli Friedman, Claudia Juhre, Laurence Liauw, Paul Lin, Ting Shi, Casey Wang, Rex Wong, and Chun Yang.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49890032976145,"sku":"CIN9888083694G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52667086962961,"sku":"NLS9789888083695","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9888083694.jpg?v=1772102156"},{"product_id":"strip-book-stefan-al-9780262035743","title":"The Strip","description":"The transformations of the Strip--from the fake Wild West to neon signs twenty stories high to starchitecture--and how they mirror America itself.The Las Vegas Strip has impersonated the Wild West, with saloon doors and wagon wheels; it has decked itself out in midcentury modern sleekness. It has illuminated itself with twenty-story-high neon signs, then junked them. After that came Disney-like theme parks featuring castles and pirates, followed by replicas of Venetian canals, New York skyscrapers, and the Eiffel Tower. (It might be noted that forty-two million people visited Las Vegas in 2015--ten million more than visited the real Paris.) More recently, the Strip decided to get classy, with casinos designed by famous architects and zillion-dollar collections of art. Las Vegas became the implosion capital of the world as developers, driven by competition, got rid of the old to make way for the new--offering a non-metaphorical definition of creative destruction. In The Strip, Stefan Al examines the many transformations of the Las Vegas Strip, arguing that they mirror transformations in America itself. The Strip is not, as popularly supposed, a display of architectural freaks but representative of architectural trends and a record of social, cultural, and economic change. Al tells two parallel stories. He describes the feverish competition of Las Vegas developers to build the snazziest, most tourist-grabbing casinos and resorts--with a cast of characters including the mobster Bugsy Siegel, the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, and the would-be political kingmaker Sheldon Adelson. And he views the Strip in a larger social context, showing that it has not only reflected trends but also magnified them and sometimes even initiated them. 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With a consumer base of 1.3 billion mainland Chinese deprived of casino gambling, and the world’s largest growing consumer class, international corporations rushed in to enter the games. As a result, the casino influx has permanently transformed the Macau peninsula: its ocean reclaimed, hillside excavated, roads congested, air polluted, and glimmering hotel towers tossed into the skyline, dwarfing the 19th century church towers.     Essays by a number of experts give a deeper insight on topics ranging from the myth of the Chinese gambler, the role of feng shui in casino design, the city’s struggle with heritage conservation, the politics of land reclamation, and the effect of the casino industry on the public realm. Drawings and photographs in vivid color visualize Macau’s patchwork of distinct urban enclaves: from downtown casinos, their neon-blasting storefronts eclipsing adjacent homes and schools, to the palatial complexes along a new highway, a Las Vegas-style strip. They also reveal how developers go to great lengths to impress the gambler with gimmicks such as fluorescent lighting, botanic gardens, feng shui dragon statues, cast members’ costumes, Chinese art imitations, and crystal chandelier-decked elevators. It is a book that helps readers grasp the complex process of the development of the casino industry and its overall impact on the social and architectural fabric of the first and last colonial enclave in China.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50403418964241,"sku":"CIN1943859388G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1943859388.jpg?v=1751218755"},{"product_id":"urbanism-reader-book-stefan-al-9781350377905","title":"The Urbanism Reader","description":"Positioning design at the center of the debate, The Urbanism Reader brings together classic and contemporary readings to help designers understand the complexities of cities and urban design in the 21st century.   The selection of readings presented here is uniquely tailored to a design perspective for architects and urban designers – balancing social issues in urbanism with a clear focus on foregrounding design as an instrument for change in cities, and examining the outcomes and challenges of recent design theories, design methods, and technologies in the built urban environment.   Covering today’s most urgent issues, 45 texts explore key topics in urbanism – from digital design technologies to smart cities, from the ongoing ecological crisis to public health and the impact of Covid-19, and from emergence and informality to economic inequity in global cities. Chapters cover cultural issues including diversity, indigenous knowledge, decolonization, social justice, and inclusion alongside technological developments, while a final chapter speculates on the future of urbanism through readings in AI, virtual reality, and the frontiers of current thinking in architecture and urban design.   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Stefan Al weaves together archaeology, engineering, social history and environmental science to explain how our homes—the spaces in which we spend half our lives—developed through the ages and how they shaped civilisation. Whisking readers from ancient Pompeii to contemporary Hong Kong, industrial-age Liverpool to post-war Levittown, Al shows how our choices in housing have both reflected and affected ideas about gender roles, privacy and comfort. He explores architectural developments—like doorknockers, corridors and insulation—and details how the quest for housing has had severe consequences for the environment. Finally, he examines the myths and reality of future housing, including 3D-printed homes and space architecture built by robots.   Stefan Al’s Supertall was praised as:      “A thoughtful inquiry into the new generations of skyscrapers…There is a lot of rich history here, well and concisely told (and illustrated with superb line drawings, a refreshing change).” — Paul Goldberger, The New York Times Book Review  “The sheer volume of calculation required to build and keep [supertalls] aloft and functioning is astounding. 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