Over the last ten years the city of Hangzhou, China has tripled in size and gained over a million people in population. Learning from Hangzhou is an extended photo essay with brief, incisive texts that present the historical city of Hangzhou under the physically and culturally transformative influence of China's unbridled economic expansion. From 2003-2008 over three thousand images were taken and divided into patterns of reoccurring visual phenomenon. The resulting photographic catalog presents a developing city codified along the edges of its own physical utterances. The ubiquity of demolition and construction; the city's vast architectural eclecticism; accruements of habitation; graffiti advertising; the tenuous relationship of architecture and signage; climate control and cultural desire all collide in an orgy of permissiveness in a city once renown for its tranquil beauty. The case study of Hangzhou is indicative of the rapid physical evolution and concurrent social transformation that is taking place in many of China's urban centers; it also provides lessons for a globalizing world and its increasingly frivolous commoditization of public space. This book takes its cue from the seminal work of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, "Learning from Las Vegas". It also includes a foreword by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. This book also analyzes China's speedy urbanization and the myriad of architectural styles, cultural phenomenon, and semiotic idiosyncrasies that condensed growth has left in its path through a case study of one traditional city.