Why it looks like this

Between 1932 and 1945, Japan made Changchun the showcase capital of its puppet state of Manchukuo, renaming it Hsinking, 'new capital'. Planners gave it what Tokyo itself did not have: a monumental plan of broad tree-lined avenues, radial boulevards, and enormous circular plazas from which streets fan out like spokes.

After 1949 the city became China's 'Motor City' — home of First Automobile Works — and the socialist decades added their own wide blocks. But the round plazas and radial geometry of the 1930s still organize the centre.