Wayfinding has many applications, and arguably the most important one is public transportation systems. Granted, there are many different ways to design such a system, and the politics and culture of the environment in which it will be integrated certainly plays a large role. Interestingly, often when we discuss transportation systems on the global scale, individuals are so quick to praise New York or London’s metro systems, Europe’s “high speed” rail system, or how “Uber is the most original new technology cities have seen”. All of these statements are subjective, but somehow they’ve become accepted fact, especially in the West, and I argue that anyone who gives European/American public transport that much praise is blissfully living in a bubble. As an international student who grew up in America and has visited most of its major cities, lived in China for two years, and is now studying in the Middle East, I’ve had the opportunity to use almost every public transportation system to exist. Old fashion taxis, the Maglev, high speed trains, shared bikes, shared mopeds, carpools, the bus, the metro, I have used them all, but nothing quite compares to the way China does public transport.
China’s dreamers and dropouts: ‘lying flat’ generation checks out in Dali
Cheap, remote and beautiful city attracts thousands of young people and Gen X-ers escaping economic treadmill
Why Public Transportation Works Better Outside the U.S.
The widespread failure of American mass transit is usually blamed on cheap gas and suburban sprawl. But the full story of why other countries succeed is more complicated.
China’s response to Belt and Road backlash
Many of the accusations serve geopolitical or economic purposes. They are not always logically coherent. Responsibilities of Chinese businesses are confused
Inside China’s robotics revolution
The long read: How close are we to the sci-fi vision of autonomous humanoid robots? I visited 11 companies in five Chinese cities to find out
The Electric Vehicle Developmental State | Paolo Gerbaudo
BYD exemplifies transformations in Chinese industrial policy
Designing a wayfinding concept for Vancouver's Skytrain system.
I wasn’t always a big fan of public transport.
China’s bigger, better batteries
It’s the world’s fastest-growing power technology — and Beijing is dominant
Who’s Afraid of Chinese Models? (Stratechery Article 7-20-2026)
Will New Technology Make High-Speed Rail Obsolete?
Do new technologies undermine the case for fast trains?
China
The most important story of 2014 that most people ignored was the Chinese economy overtaking the US economy. (This is using the purchasing power parity metric, which incorporates differences in...
Community Wealth Building — Urban Affairs Review
Scholars of urban politics have long debated the issue of what cities can and should do to promote the economic well-being of their residents. As the of election Zohran Mamdani illustrates, urban residents are increasingly demanding that city governments do more to address the increasingly exorbitant costs of housing, childcare, and transportation. One obvious solution is to raise taxes on the private holders of wealth. By the same token, his election has prompted handwringing on the right about the “inevitable” flight of capital out of New York City. Scholarship that runs the gamut from the public choice school associated with the “city limits” perspective (Peterson 1981) through to Marxian accounts (Logan and Molotch 1987) all recognize that the private ownership of wealth and the mobility of capital puts cities in a bind, especially in a context of highly circumscribed levels of federal urban spending. Though several scholars (Logan and Swanstrom 1990; Kantor and Savitch 1993; Schragger 2016) have demonstrated that cities have greater latitude to promote egalitarian public policies than these perspective allow, few would argue that the deep structural problems of economic and social inequality can be fully resolved by tax-and-spend liberalism (Imbroscio 2010).
The Future, Made in China
Beijing is competing with the U.S. for tech supremacy. Who wins will have huge political implications.
Wang Huning, “The Structure of China’s Changing Political Culture”
Wang Huning, “The Structure of China’s Changing Political Culture”[1] Introduction by Matthew D. Johnson Introduction Wang Huning (b. 1955) is widely viewed as China’s most powerful...
Plan the Geary metro right, right now
Part 1: Strong corridor; tight station spacing; frequent trains
