China's Building Frenzy

Shanghai, to most Westerners, is just a name half a world away. Think of a city, however, with twice as many skyscrapers as New York City, and scheduled for 1,000 more by 2010! That is Shanghai. Shanghai this year, the New York Times reports, will complete towers with more space for living and working than there is in all the office buildings in New York City!

Landscape architects are of course beneficiaries of this amazing boom. Robert Egan, who runs the PlaceMakers landscape architecture firm in Beijing, reports working on a master plan for a 28-mile riverfront area, a scale that he marvels at.