Bigness and the Search for Identity – Think tanks in an emergent Asian modernism

Since the 1950s, the soft power of the United Nations—often exercised in the form of economic and technical aid for the “Third World”—legitimized the implementation of  aggressive policies of urban renewal by newly formed governments as a tool to modernize postcolonial societies. The search for new architectural and urban forms corresponded  with the search for new national identities.

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