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German cityscape. 42 Despite its fl aws and failures, he contends that “An Ting
New Town is a courageous project characterized by considerable motivation
towards quality, in technical terms the Mercedes Benz, so to speak, among
the thus far completed theme cities of the 'One City, Nine Towns-Plan.'” 43
Part of its “high quality” (quality discourse redux) is the exacting technical
standards the architects embedded into the project. h ese are not just empty
symbols or rhetoric; An Ting included better than usual standards in terms
of energy e' ciency, quality of materials, emission reduction, waste separa-
tion, a balanced supply of green and recreational spaces, and short walking
distances. For example, the German Fichtner Company built an energy sup-
ply system using “natural energy” rather than air conditioners. Here, sus-
tainability and technology are not just symbols, but based on highly exact-
ing technical standards.
An Ting is, in contrast to h ames Town, the “Mercedes Benz” of the nine
towns. What does it mean to extol the low-carbon lifestyle of the “original
ecological German style apartments” so closely associated with the automo-
bile production industry? In 2005, China surpassed Germany to become the
third largest auto manufacturer in the world. h e past two decades were
truly an auto boom in China. Industry analysts estimate that by 2020 China
will be the largest producer and consumer of cars, exceeding the United
States. In Shanghai alone (from 1990 to 2003), the number of motor vehicles
climbed from 212,000 to 1.2 million. 44 Like the industrial expansion of the
past two decades, the scale and speed of highway expansion in China is diz-
zying. Americans have been a crucial part of China's twentieth-century auto
history. h ey include men like Oliver Todd, a civil engineer who built the
Hetch Hetchy Dam in the Sierra Nevada and spent eighteen years building a
thousand miles of roads for the American Red Cross in the 1920s (John Muir
protested the fl ooding of Hetch Hetchy, and thus kick-started the modern
American preservation movement). h ey also include the city planner E. P.
Goodrich, who built scenic roadways based on the Bronx River Parkway
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