Books
On the Distinctive Character of the Harbin City Planning Scheme: Harbin Municipal Office, Urban Construction Section, 1938
On the Distinctive Character of the Harbin City Planning Scheme — 1938
A scarce official monograph of 1938, issued by the Urban Construction Section of the Harbin Municipal Office, setting out the outline of the Harbin city-planning enterprise and explaining what made it distinctive. Compiled at the height of the Manchukuo era, the work presents the planners' own account of how one of the great cities of the Northeast was to be ordered, zoned, and built — the ambitions of state urbanism rendered from the inside.
The volume is illustrated with twenty-seven photographic views and, most notably, carries a large folding colour plate, the Outline Map of the Harbin City Planning Scheme, printed in colour at approximately 38 by 34 centimetres. Official planning reports of this kind were produced for restricted institutional use and seldom preserved with their folding map intact; surviving copies are accordingly uncommon.
As a primary source it speaks directly to the architecture, cartography, and administrative vision of Harbin under the planning regime of the late 1930s — a specific and substantial document for historians of modern East Asian urbanism and of Manchukuo-era city building.
A genuine artefact of its moment, well suited to a serious collection of architectural and photographic books and East Asian historical materials.
Offered by KT Vintage, drawing on decades of trusted international sales to discerning collectors and institutions across Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania.
Description & Historical Context
On the Distinctive Character of the Harbin City Planning Scheme — 1938
A scarce official monograph of 1938, issued by the Urban Construction Section of the Harbin Municipal Office, setting out the outline of the Harbin city-planning enterprise and explaining what made it distinctive. Compiled at the height of the Manchukuo era, the work presents the planners' own account of how one of the great cities of the Northeast was to be ordered, zoned, and built — the ambitions of state urbanism rendered from the inside.
The volume is illustrated with twenty-seven photographic views and, most notably, carries a large folding colour plate, the Outline Map of the Harbin City Planning Scheme, printed in colour at approximately 38 by 34 centimetres. Official planning reports of this kind were produced for restricted institutional use and seldom preserved with their folding map intact; surviving copies are accordingly uncommon.
As a primary source it speaks directly to the architecture, cartography, and administrative vision of Harbin under the planning regime of the late 1930s — a specific and substantial document for historians of modern East Asian urbanism and of Manchukuo-era city building.
A genuine artefact of its moment, well suited to a serious collection of architectural and photographic books and East Asian historical materials.
Offered by KT Vintage, drawing on decades of trusted international sales to discerning collectors and institutions across Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania.
Collation
| Category | Books |
|---|---|
| Condition | acceptable |
| SKU | N0000010819 |