Juan Du – författare

An award-winning Hong Kong–based architect with decades of experience designing buildings and planning cities in the People’s Republic of China takes us to the Pearl River delta and into the heart of China’s iconic Special Economic Zone, Shenzhen.Shenzhen is ground zero for the economic transformation China has seen in recent decades. In 1979, driven by China’s widespread poverty, Deng Xiaoping supported a bold proposal to experiment with economic policies in a rural borderland next to Hong Kong. The site was designated as the City of Shenzhen and soon after became China’s first Special Economic Zone (SEZ). Four decades later, Shenzhen is a megacity of twenty million, an internationally recognized digital technology hub, and the world’s most successful economic zone. Some see it as a modern miracle city that seemingly came from nowhere, attributing its success solely to centralized planning and Shenzhen’s proximity to Hong Kong. The Chinese government has built hundreds of new towns using the Shenzhen model, yet none has come close to replicating the city’s level of economic success.But is it true that Shenzhen has no meaningful history? That the city was planned on a tabula rasa? That the region’s rural past has had no significant impact on the urban present? Juan Du unravels the myth of Shenzhen and shows us how this world-famous “instant city” has a surprising history—filled with oyster fishermen, villages that remain encased within city blocks, a secret informal housing system—and how it has been catapulted to success as much by the ingenuity of its original farmers as by Beijing’s policy makers. The Shenzhen Experiment is an important story for all rapidly urbanizing and industrializing nations around the world seeking to replicate China’s economic success in the twenty-first century.

The book provides new perspectives from leading researchers accentuating and examining the central role of the built environment in conceiving and implementing multifaceted solutions for the complex challenges of creating resilient communities, revealing critical potentials for architecture and design to contribute in more informed and long-term ways to the urgent transition of our society. The volume offers a compilation of peer-reviewed papers that uniquely connects knowledge and criticality broadly across practice and academia; from new technologies, theories and methods to community engaged practice on many scales, and more. The book is part of a series of six volumes that explore the agency of the built environment in relation to the SDGs through new research conducted by leading researchers. The series is led by editors Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen and Martin Tamke in collaboration with the theme editors: - Design for Climate Adaptation: Billie Faircloth and Maibritt Pedersen Zari- Design for Rethinking Resources: Carlo Ratti and Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen (Eds.)- Design for Resilient Communities: Anna Rubbo and Juan Du (Eds.)- Design for Health: Arif Hasan and Christian Benimana (Eds.)- Design for Inclusivity: Magda Mostafa and Ruth Baumeister (Eds.)- Design for Partnerships for Change: Sandi Hilal and Merve Bedir (Eds.)

The book provides new perspectives from leading researchers accentuating and examining the central role of the built environment in conceiving and implementing multifaceted solutions for the complex challenges of creating resilient communities, revealing critical potentials for architecture and design to contribute in more informed and long-term ways to the urgent transition of our society. The volume offers a compilation of peer-reviewed papers that uniquely connects knowledge and criticality broadly across practice and academia; from new technologies, theories and methods to community engaged practice on many scales, and more. The book is part of a series of six volumes that explore the agency of the built environment in relation to the SDGs through new research conducted by leading researchers. The series is led by editors Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen and Martin Tamke in collaboration with the theme editors: - Design for Climate Adaptation: Billie Faircloth and Maibritt Pedersen Zari- Design for Rethinking Resources: Carlo Ratti and Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen (Eds.)- Design for Resilient Communities: Anna Rubbo and Juan Du (Eds.)- Design for Health: Arif Hasan and Christian Benimana (Eds.)- Design for Inclusivity: Magda Mostafa and Ruth Baumeister (Eds.)- Design for Partnerships for Change: Sandi Hilal and Merve Bedir (Eds.)

Based on 55 semi-structured in-depth interviews, this book investigates 15 high-tech engineering co-op professionals’ writing experience in the workplace. It shows how the digital age has had a marked impact on the engineers’ methods of communication at work, and how on-the -job writing has affected engineers’ technical competence, shaped their professional identities, challenged their views on Chinese and English writing, and hindered their success in the workplace. The book identifies three aspects of writing practice: engineers’ linguistic and literacy challenges, the reasons behind these challenges, and coping strategies, which suggest that engineers are underprepared and lack necessary support in the workplace. Lastly, the study shows that engineers need to engage in technical literacy through on-the-job writing so that they can fully deal with workplace discourse and socialize with diverse professional groups.Since the sample group interviewed in this book is engineers who studied at universities in the United States and have a foot in the world of school and work as well as knowledge of both Eastern and Western cultures, the book appeals to teachers, students, engineers and scientists who are interested in scientific and technological writing. It is also valuable for educators who prepare scientists, engineers, and technical communicators for professional roles, as well as for communication practitioners who work with engineers.