Reply To: Dissertation Help!

[Thomas J. Johnson]

It sounds like you need to narrow your focus. It’s good to throw a bunch of ideas out there, just to get them out and get a feel for them but you need to refine it.

One global trend I’ve observed is the “Southern Californification” of China. China has specifically sought out US designers to plan and design towns and neighborhoods to look like the United States. Many of the designers are from Southern California. What you end up with is Southern California in China. It’s hilarious.

Here you have China with a rich design history and unique aesthetic, intentionally disregarding it’s cultural heritage with aspirations of being like the most vanilla, homogenized place on the planet. “we want stucco and stone veneer McMansions just like you have…” Combine that with their desire for suburbs and the automobile and you’ve got a real mess on your hands…

There is a book called The Third Wave that talks about “waves” of technology passing over the globe. Agricultural, Industrial and Technological. The same principle can be seen in Land Arch. While the older industrialized nations (US/Europe) are trying to figure out how to rid our cities of the scourge called the automobile, China is only beginning to go through the same mistakes we’ve already made, except they are doing it on a grand scale, the likes of which the world has never seen.

As the US and Europe develop means of coping with the automobile (or lack there of) in our cities, China will figure out what a mess they’ve created and will be seeking our expertise on how to modify their suburbs and cities (that we designed) to deal with the congestion and pollution caused by automobile. They are in the midst of creating the mistakes we’ve already made.

Hey, there you go. There’s another thesis topic; The influence of the automobile on the design of urban/suburban areas in countries experiencing rapid middle-class population growth.