coastal city, west and east

one of the newest, most expensive, and flashiest of the recent crop of development projects on houhai reclaimed land, coastal city (海岸城) sparkles even in a winter drizzle. i suspect that coastal city will soon enough fade into some post-whatever background, but today as i walked around both the east and west complexes, i wanted this to be important, not just an object of anthropological critique, i wanted all this building to mean something other than wild real estate speculation and irresponsible environmental policy. i wanted it to become a city to fall in love with, even though i can’t bring myself to say i like shenzhen. clearly if not misplaced, my sentiments are vexed.

so pictures.