"Suzhou is China's fabled garden city, home to the greatest collection of classical Chinese gardens in the world and threatened by redevelopment and the rush to modernization which accompany the aspirations of a new market economy.".

"In 1996, an energetic team of landscape architects and planners from EDAW and the Pei Group was summoned by Suzhou's enlightened mayor to confront this dilemma and help prevent the loss of a cherished cultural resource. They introduced the workshop format to China, an innovation that produced an integrated economic and design plan in an astonishingly short time."--BOOK JACKET.