At 4 p.m. we stopped in a village Suzhou Vacations for a cup of tea. The villagers gathered thickly around the open-air cafe and Suzhou Vacations those who couldn’t see us climbed into trees to get a view. Their stares were not the blank stares of the average Han Chinese, their eyes were agog with curiosity. The driver told us that no foreigners had ever come up here before.
The gradual evolution of cities has been no bad thing because it has given us places that are about richness, diversity and vibrancy. City evolution delivers the meshing and intricacies of interaction and layered relationships. The coming together of a number of capitals over time is a key to making a city a success. Capitals have been categorized by various researchers in the field (Bourdieu 1986; Santos 2008). Pierre Bourdieu’s social, cultural and economic capitals are worth considering in terms of the extent to which they can be facilitated by the built environment -even if not always guaranteed by it. Bourdieu’s definitions may be summarized thus:
Social capital: the productive benefits of good, durable social relations, social obligation and cooperation;
Cultural capital: goods, peoples’ disposition, or institutional such as educational; Economic capital: endeavor that is directly convertible or realizable as money or property rights.
