Rouse's malls in its fancy "planned communities" win breathless praise from architecture and urban planning critics.

FORBES: General Growth Revives The All-Debt Deal

Its college of Architecture and Urban Planning bears his name, as does a research institute at the medical school.

FORBES: Alfred Taubman

"Large, fast-growing cities like Los Angeles suddenly decant population out to smaller cities inland, " says Robert Bruegmann, a professor of architecture and urban planning at the University of Illinois.

FORBES

As a specialist in architecture and urban planning, Mr Bandarin previously worked in both public and private institutions in the fields of built heritage, cultural heritage conservation, environmental heritage and cultural events, as well as architectural and urban design in developing countries.

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There is also a browse-worthy bookshop with Scandinavia's largest selection of architecture, design and urban planning publications.

BBC: The reigning king of Scandinavian design

"The architecture reflected the times, " says Wu Jiang, an architect and former Shanghai urban-planning official whose grandfather was a U.S.-trained architect who worked in the city in the 1930s.

WSJ: Touring Asia's Art Deco Gems in Shanghai and Napier, New Zealand