Better cities often build nothing at all

A BETTER city is not always built. Often you do a city good by building nothing at all.

In a way, it's a great achievement in urban architecture simply to achieve nothing in new building projects.

As a senior Chinese leader recently told local officials in Nanjing, capital city of Jiangsu Province, non-construction is no less a merit than construction in making a better city. [Editor's note: Nanjing has seen the rise of one ugly high-rise building after another in the past few years, only to dwarf the time-worn beauty of ancient architecture such as walls and drum towers.]

The life of a city lies in its culture embodied in architecture new and old. If you bulldoze all or most old structures in the name of modernization, you kill a city's culture and in turn reduce the level of happiness of its citizens.

Yes, a few new structures are erected, but cultural roots have been lost as nearly everything is newly made. It's like burning a whole house simply to boil an egg.