A study by OMA and the Harvard Graduate School of Design on the Pearl River Delta, an area of China undergoing a maelstrom of modernization and set to become a megalopolis of 36 million inhabitants by 2020.

Destined to become a crucial presence in the 21st century through sheer size alone, the Pearl River Delta region of the People's Republic of China - a cluster of five cities with a population of 12 million that will become a megalopolis of 36 million inhabitants by the year 2020 - has been gripped by a relentless pursuit of development at a scale and velocity previously unseen in the world. This maelstrom of modernization has been hastened by the presence of two Special Economic Zones in the Pearl River Delta: laboratories for the combined experimentation of communism and capitalism that have produced an entirely new urban substance. Great Leap Forward is based on field work conducted in 1996 and consists of a series of interrelated studies investigating a complex urban condition that has resulted from a uniquely transformed political environment. Essays by Bernard Chang, Mihai Cracium, Rem Koolhaas, Nancy Lkin, Yuyang Liu, Kate Orff, Stephanie Smith with commentary by Gingyun Ma.