NEW YORK — When observing the chaotic growth of the modern city, the more erudite of urban planners will reminisce wistfully on how different it is from its ancient Greek counterpart, the polis, which Italian architectural historian Leonardo Benevolo once described as "dynamic but stable, in balance with nature and growing manageably even after reaching large dimensions."
The rapid and uncontrolled sprawl of today's cities breeds alarm not only among urban planners and architects but also among public health experts, for the apparent randomness of the urban dynamic is robbing the population of its basic health and well-being through environmental pollution, shrinking green areas, inadequate housing, overburdened public services, mushrooming makeshift settlements on the outskirts, mounting anomie and the sheer numbers of neighbors who do not know each other.
Beijing, a city of over 17 million inhabitants, exemplifies this social alienation. Until the early 1980s, the Chinese capital was constructed as a multitude of siheyuans, or one-story complexes built around a common courtyard inhabited by three or four families who shared a single kitchen and water spigot. These courtyards were connected by narrow hutongs that formed a north-south, east-west grid.