China's urban landscape today is confused and restless, if not entirely unreadable, after more than two decades of high-volume construction. This book bemoans the loss of local culture as reflected in the urban landscape and introduces a set of design guidelines to recover the loss of Chinese cities' cultural identity, with Nanjing as a case study. After surveying Nanjing's transformation from the imperial period to the post-reform era, the book identifies seven key elements of the “Chinese urban form”: city plan, skylines, street networks, urban blocks, public space, public buildings and residential houses. For each of the seven elements, the book proposes a number of improvements, such as how to redesign public space, street networks and housing blocks to make the cityscape better represent local culture. Calling their approach “typomorphology” – a fusion of typology and morphology, the authors believe that if some of these design proposals were followed, the urban landscape of Chinese cities would be less generic, more legible and more reflective of the local heritage.

The critique of the madness in Chinese urban landscape is spot on. However, whether the “identity crisis” can be resolved by re-inscribing traditional Chinese urban forms, or by urban design in general, is dubious.

Three issues loom. First, the book has a rather static understanding of “culture,” “tradition” and “identity.” These words are used almost interchangeably throughout the text without any in-depth discussion. The authors look back to the past to locate “Chinese urban forms,” and through the lens of Nanjing, the urban forms that reflect “local identity” are mostly pre-1949 design elements. The authors claim that these traditional forms are more “agreeable” and “harmonious,” as compared to building forms in the PRC era, and thus should be reintroduced in contemporary urban design practices. But how sensible or feasible is it to apply their ideas to Chinese cities today? The major weakness of the book is its failure to acknowledge that culture, tradition and identity are all in flux in urban China today, as they have always been. Therefore, it is not even close to a remedy to look to the past and to accentuate urban landscape with pre-1949 design elements.

The second issue is the book's paradigm of urban design as an “open” versus a “closed” system. The authors criticize urban planning in China as a “closed system” characterized by a top-down approach and standardization. However, many of the design proposals in the book also resemble a closed approach. For example, regarding public space, the authors recommend that “a civic square be located adjacent to a public building,” and “the square should be placed on one side of the building, and preferably on the south side” (p. 185). They write that “the marriage of squares and public buildings, especially the historic ones, celebrate the building heritage and therefore celebrate the cultural identity” (p. 185). Such recommendations are exactly the opposite of what an open-system design should be, that is, allowing ample flexibility for revisions, additions and reinterpretations. While some of the book's design proposals are overly rigid, others are simply impossible to implement, such as opening up gated communities and breaking down “super-blocs.” It would be interesting to see how middle-class property owners react to proposals such as tearing down the gates, walls and fences, and diverting city traffic into the streets of their compounds. There is no doubt that the gated communities should be better integrated with the rest of the city, but these proposals are designers' wishful thinking at best.

The last issue relates to the capabilities and limitations of urban design, i.e. what urban design can do, or cannot do, from solving identity crises to reducing inequality. This is probably a question beyond the scope of the book and one that should be asked of urban design as a discipline. “Design” has become a controversial term today because it assumes far greater agency, control and power in the hands of designers. But in fact their power to intervene is rather limited. Especially in places such as China, where a strong state combines with a strong market, urban design more often reflects political and socio-economic dynamics rather than shapes and changes these dynamics.

Urban design in the West has struggled with its neighbouring disciplines over its professional boundaries, such as architecture, landscape architecture and urban planning. In China, urban design is still in its infancy. Over the past years, publications on Chinese architecture and urban planning have proliferated, but urban design has been somehow overlooked. This book's contribution is to raise awareness of urban design as a discipline. Its specific recommendations are perhaps debatable, but it nonetheless adds to the larger conversation on what design professionals can do, to make the Chinese city a more “decent” place under 21st-century capitalism – a more open and equitable place in which people can work, live and play.