After “Ghost City” stories about China, items on how new development mimics the West are always a favourite.
Bianca Bosker, an American journalist and author of “Original Copies: Architectural Mimicry in Contemporary China,” a book on Chinese copycat architecture, … toured many of China’s copycat communities in an effort to understand why a country with its own rich architectural history is turning to the West in their urbanization efforts.
She has an interesting conclusion: “This architecture is symbolic of China’s aspiration to and ascendence to global supremacy. China is able to master and replicate the greatest achievements of the West.”
Not quite sure how that explains a similar phenomenon of mimicry in Las Vegas – but we’ll explore that next week.
The rote learning system seems to be still common practice in China, on a grand scale in this instance. Why should Las Vegas be the only burg where you can see such instant ersatz environments?
Sure it looks the same, but are these copies built to Western building codes? I also would never consider describing suburbia as one of the West’s greatest achievements.
It probably doesn’t explain it … The Strip in Las Vegas seems more like a giant theme park to me.