Uneasy Streets

Ghost neighbourhoods, trainless railways, empty officesa bottom-up look at Chinas footprint in British cities.Empty apartments, trainless railways, restless investorsa bottom-up look at Chinas erratic economic and social footprint in British cities.From Thames Water to Heathrow Airport, Pizza Express to private schools, Chinese investors have pumped billions into UK property and business. Foreign capital ready to regenerate Britains crumbling infrastructure is an enticing prospect. But how much is reality and how much a dream?InUneasy Streets, Caroline Knowles illuminates Chinas global influence from the bottom up. Focusing on London and Manchester, she explores Beijings grand claims of urban renewal against the ramshackle physical evidence she finds at street level: a series of half-finished buildings and abandoned holes in the ground. This isnt just a British phenomenon: wherever they emerge, Chinas global cities are patchworks of incompletenessthe products of relentlessly profit-driven urbanism that disregards the people it claims to serve. All along the continent-spanning Belt and Road network lies a trail of broken promises: a phantom university, a non-existent smart city, ghost ports and neighbourhoods.Chinas soft-power city-making falls far short of the dreams displayed in glossy brochures; all those smiling mayors, investors and local businesspeople. Combining urban observation with sharp commentary, interviewing property developers, Chinese migrants and other city-dwellers, Knowles paints an intimate, nuanced portrait. This is the financial, material and human fabric of Chinese Britain.