By Xiong Lei

At his first sight of Las Vegas, a Chinese student of community participation in urban development remarked, "I feel as if I am back in Beijing's second ring road!"

Indeed, the shadow of the American casino capital looms large over Beijing and many other Chinese cities, which vie with one another in copying the model of Las Vegas to become a mixture of something of everything.

With a messy combination of bits from New York City, Paris, Italy, Egypt and others, Las Vegas could satisfy a fancy of the wonderland.

Yet the city in the wild desert is a nightmare for urban planners, as it has developed with little planning. Even though Las Vegas hosted the centennial convention of the American Planning Association (APA) in late April, many American planners dismiss it as a good example of urban development.

"It was simply built up willfully by those who had the money," says Wang Yan, a member of APA and director of urban design with HOK, a Chicago-based global architectural firm that specializes in planning and design.

Wang and many of his APA colleagues warn against taking Las Vegas as a typical example of American cities.

To their regret, however, Las Vegas becomes a role model for too many Chinese cities in their drive for urban development. Like Las Vegas, these cities with entirely different cultural and socioeconomic contexts are sprawling ever wider with ever more and taller high-rises, until they become jungles of cement.

In copying the Las Vegas style of pursuing things seemingly novel and fascinating, these Chinese cities are lost in similar urban landscapes and become identical "cloned sisters and brothers", as Shan Jixiang, director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, puts it.

As Shan told an audience at the APA centennial convention in Las Vegas, a city's soul does not lie in clusters of eccentric and weird buildings copied from here and there. Blind imitation of foreign architectural styles is by no means modernization.