Old, walled courtyard homes are the building blocks of this delightful maze of lanes.

BBC: Old Beijing at its timeless best

Pierpont Davis and Walter Davis built small apartment complexes around courtyards and high-end single-family courtyard homes in Los Angeles.

WSJ: Full Enclosure - WSJ Mansion

Lined with family-owned shops and siheyuan (traditional courtyard homes), each hutong illustrates a way of life that has endured in Beijing for eight centuries.

BBC: The perfect trip: China

In 2009 all its courtyard homes were demolished.

BBC: Old Beijing at its timeless best

When early modernism came around in the 1930s, however, courtyard homes weren't as prevalent because houses tended to be more of an "object in the landscape" instead of being intertwined with the outdoors, Mr. Dick, the architect, says.

WSJ: Full Enclosure - WSJ Mansion

Yet, visitors to Beijing do not have to go too far off the beaten path to find dingy alleyways lined by what remains of the old courtyard homes that exist in clusters, like islands on the verge of being swallowed by the tidal wave of new China.

CNN: April 10, 2012 -- Updated 1353 GMT (2153 HKT)

An hour from Udaipur, another Indian city, the authors spotted well-tended homes with motorcycles in the courtyard and children in starched school uniforms.

ECONOMIST: Economics focus: The in-betweeners | The