Letters to the Leaders of China: Kongjian Yu and the Future of the Chinese City

With contributions by Ai Weiwei, Thomas J. Campanella, Zhongjie Lin, Xuefei Ren, Peter G. Rowe, Michael Sorkin, Daniel Sui, Julie Sze, and Kongjian Yu
Amidst China’s rapid economic development and spiraling ecological devastation in 2003, the landscape architect and designer Kongjian Yu emerged, with the publication of The Road to Urban Landscape: A Dialogue with the Mayors, as a powerful broker for change in the domain of city planning. Since then, the text has been circulated widely among the nation’s mayors; Yu’s design firm, Turenscape, has flourished and now counts 600 employees and more than 2,000 projects in more than 200 cities among its accomplishments; and Yu’s core design concepts—from negative planning to “green sponge” cities—have been codified at the highest levels of official design guidance. Yu further established his bona fides and influence among young practitioners by founding the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at Peking University.
Letters to the Leaders of China: Kongjian Yu and the Future of the Chinese City excerpts and updates Kongjian Yu’s 2003 classic and contains additional, previously unpublished letters to high-ranking officials across the country, including President Xi Jinping. Contributions from geographers, urban historians, sociologists, and critical theorists situate Yu’s work within the context of China’s rapidly evolving cities, explore those cities’ historical morphologies, and chronicle Yu’s upbringing in a rural village and formative years in Beijing. The essays, interviews, and manifestos, including a lengthy colloquy with artist Ai Weiwei, affirm Kongjian Yu’s indispensability to a sustainable transformation of China’s environmental and urban design legacy.