Taking cases from the until-now little-analyzed un-demolished remains of city center neighborhoods in Shanghai, the book Urban Loopholes: Creative Alliances of Spatial Production in Shanghai’s City Center by Dr. Ying Zhou will unpack the seemingly anarchic and opportunistic urban spatial production system of the contemporary Chinese city to address what has perplexed Western public as well as scholars alike.

Dr. Ying Zhou, is currently assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong (HKU)’s Department of Architecture. Her research interest on the relationship of contemporary urban developments and the growth of cultural industries and new economies in East Asian cities, global linkages and architectural knowledge exchanges developed from her work with the chair of Kees Christiaanse at the Future Cities Lab of the Singapore-ETH Centre and with the chair of Herzog & de Meuron at the ETH Studio Basel. Born in Shanghai,Ying holds a B.S.E. in Architecture and Engineering from Princeton, a M.Arch. from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard, a Ph.D. from the ETH, and was a Fulbright fellow at the University of Stuttgart. She has practiced and taught in New York, Shanghai, Detroit, Boston,Basel and Hong Kong.