Looking to the future ... the Da Shi Lan area is one of the last remaining traditional districts. Photograph: Dan Chung
As the Summer Olympics grow ever nearer, the race is on to complete Beijing's new skyline. From Norman Foster's Beijing Terminal 3 to Rem Koolhaas's CCTV building and Herzog & de Meuron's Bird's Nest Stadium, the speed of change at one of the world's biggest building sites is nothing short of phenomenal. Photographer Kadir van Lohizen has recorded the progress for Time magazine, without shying away from the impact such a project has had on local residents.
Despite Prince Charles's attempts to save the city's traditional hutongs, only one-sixth of the distinctive alleyways now remain. The question still remains: how much irreversible damage is being made to the city's identity - not to mention people - in the name of progress? This list of other architectural projects in China reveals the scale of the redevelopment being undertaken across the country, almost entirely by big-name architects from the west.
It might be nothing short of ethnic snobbery to deny a country its right to modernisation, but are we in danger of replacing one form of cultural imperialism with another? It worries me that many fast-developing cities across the world are being treated as mere architectural playgrounds of tomorrow for the leading lights of design. There seems little sense of national identity in these new projects - as great as the CCTV building or the Bird's Nest Stadium are, they would fit just as easily in Paris, London, New York or Dubai.
Maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe it's no different from western Europe embracing neo-classicism over past centuries. Maybe these cities represent a bright, shining future that the cluttered cities of the west can only look on with envy. But I'm not so sure something hasn't been lost in the process.
