In their recent series, "The Global City: Designed in Chicago, Made in China," Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin and staff photographer John J. Kim chronicle how Chicago's leading builders have remade urban China — for better and for worse.

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Now China must answer Burnham's question. The world's most populous nation has embarked on a vast experiment to move hundreds of millions of people from the countryside into new urban landscapes.

The good that has come from that experiment is very good indeed: Chinese cities at their best provide vitality and spectacle. China's booming economy has lifted hundreds of millions of its citizens out of poverty and plunked them down in dynamic urban areas ripe with potential.

But to paraphrase Burnham, how will they live? In pea-soup smog? Forced to take the car or bus from isolated apartment towers to hard-to-reach schools and markets? Past Soviet-style public squares, sterile business districts, a garish theme park or a museum that opened with nothing on display?

In 1980, less than 20 percent of China's population lived in cities. By 2012, more than half did — 710 million. Many millions more will be moving from rural villages to urban high-rises: China has pledged to speed up urbanization under a new macro-plan announced in December. But how will the new migrants live?

The cities being raised today in China will influence global urban life for decades to come. By 2030, 1 billion people — 1 of every 8 on the planet — are expected to be living in a Chinese metropolis. As Kamin writes, "For better or for worse, as more of the world's people move to cities, China is the great laboratory where the urban future will be invented, tested and refined."