average 
moment
I guess I was right in being suspicious of western urbanists who were always deafeningly silent on massive projects in China but won’t shut up for weeks about the Dutch king taking a bike-shaped shit. This is how they respond when they are forcibly confronted with the topic.
It’s a logical continuation of the early 20th century Petit-Bourgeois Americans’ worship of Europe as a beacon of sophistication. The idea of Europe as a shining city on a hill continues to occupy a central position on the minds of similarly situated Americans today, including the segments that consider themselves urbanists. And they’ll be caught dead in a ditch before they cede any of that ground to the
Far East.
Thinking about that Borealism post from a week or so ago, that really helped fully illuminate some things for me