URBAN CHINA WORKSHOP

Transcription

1 URBAN CHINA WORKSHOP Fall 2017 September 19th, Critical Chinese Copying: Authenticity and Originality in the Built Environment of Contemporary China Speaker: Boya Guo (Graduate School of Design, Harvard University) Abstract: This thesis explores the contemporary Chinese architectural mimicry phenomenon with its changing history, and the spatial and temporal dynamics embedded in copying from the West and copying from the past. Chinese copying with its rich tradition is now receiving biased judgment grounded in the dominant modern Western ideologies of authenticity and originality. Two case studies of recent Chinese architectural mimicry bring us to the formation process of core cultural values and contemporary Chinese identity, which are embedded in the collisions between the mimesis tradition and creativity, and between the Western influences and its reciprocation under a Chinese context in the contemporary media-driven moment. My thesis aims to challenge the existing dominant modern western theories on copy/mimicry, especially UNESCO s universal values, which have made great difference to preservation practices in China today. This thesis project is carried out by a combination of theoretical and historical research, field research, visual analysis, interviewing, and participant observation. September 26th, Navigating a Role for China s Urban Planning Consultants in Participatory Planning: Experience from an Urban Village in Guangzhou Speaker: Dongyang Lin (Guangzhou Urban Planning and Design Survey Research Institute) Abstract: I present experiences from an effort to pilot participatory planning in a microredevelopment project for an urban village in Guangzhou (Shenjing Village). The project created a platform for government, social groups, professionals and local people to negotiate with each other, finding ways to solve problems that concern residents. However, I will also discuss the challenges facing participatory planning in the Guangzhou context: the lack of institutional protection, strict restrictions on government expenditures for redevelopment, and the ways in which planners' roles are redefined in participatory (rather than traditional top-down) urban planning projects. October 3rd, Can Building New Towns Reform China s Housing Model? An investigation of urban morphology, development history, and social perceptions in Liangzhu Cultural Village, Hangzhou, China Speaker: Xi Qiu (Colleen) (MIT DUSP) Abstract: China is searching for urbanization strategies that generate physically appealing cities while being environmentally and socially responsible. To encourage sustainable development

2 strategies, in 2016, China announced to build 1,000 characteristic new towns by As one of the experiments preceding this policy, Liangzhu New Town was planned as a pioneering mixed-use community and a promising paradigm for a revised Chinese housing model. Liangzhu features historical heritage, novel architectural design, ecological setting, New Urbanist planning strategies, and is intended for middle-class and entrepreneurial audiences. Through archival research, fieldwork, and interviews, this study examines whether and how Liangzhu s morphological characteristics differ from the Chinese norm, how the project s design was conceived and enacted, and how Liangzhu s users original inhabitants, new residents, and visitors perceive its distinctions. In this experimental and partially successful project, I find that urban design greatly contributed to the qualities of its physical environment, including comprehensive program integration, tourist-friendly neighborhood environment, advocacy of communal culture, and a focus on improved livability and reformed social norm. Its novel spatial, environmental, and cultural characteristics are well-received by its users. I conclude that Liangzhu represents the fashion of new town ideology and marks a shift in China s housing development from a single-used gated community to a town, one that encompasses comprehensive services and attractive environment. This study demonstrates how design has enhanced livelihoods in China and how spatial characteristics have impacted lifestyles and brought about social change. Liangzhu experience offers valuable lessons for the ongoing development of housing and new towns in China s continued search for ideal, improved urban life. October 17th, Trends, Dilemmas, and Challenges of Migrants Integration in China Speaker: Yulin Chen (Tsinghua University; SPURS; MIT DUSP) Abstract: First, the lecture investigates migrants integration and the factors that influence it based on nationwide survey data. Then a before and after survey is introduced to illustrate how migrant vendors were influenced by the demolition of a farmer s market in Beijing. Finally, I choose three Chinese megacities to explore and predict future trends in their occupational structure, with a focus on the sales and service sector. October 24th, Integrating the healthcare industry with urban and economic development: The Case of the Nanjing River West New Town Speaker: Xuanyi Nie (Maxwell) (DDes Graduate School of Design, Harvard University) Abstract: Although healthcare spending in China is growing rapidly, the role of hospitals in urban settings has been undermined by both the structure and ideology of planning in China. This research studies successful cases of healthcare-driven urban development, and searches for a new paradigm that could work in China, with a case study in Nanjing River West new town area. Although this strategy could address some of the emerging issues of regional economy and urban development, a series of reforms related to healthcare system is further needed to fully exercise the capacity of this strategy.

3 October 31st, Ghost City: Nostalgia, Trauma, and the End of the Village in Contemporary China Speaker: Nick Smith (Yale-National University of Singapore; Harvard Fairbank Center) Abstract: The past decade has seen an epochal shift in Chinese urbanization, with new development programs that aim for the near-total urbanization of the nation s territory and population. These policies, including urban-rural coordination and new-type urbanization, represent a radical expansion of party-state power and an existential threat to China s villages. The new programs promise to rewrite China s reform-era social contract, undermining existing village institutions and ensuring perpetual dependence on the redistributive justice of the partystate. Through an ethnography of an experimental village in Chongqing, Smith explores villagers' experiences of this process of displacement. As urbanization has eliminated the sociospatial fabric of village institutions, villagers experience nostalgia for their lost way of life and trauma from the violence of forced dislocation. Both of these effects manifest as encounters with ghosts, absent presences that haunt the fuzzy edges between the human and the nonhuman. Village ghosts act as an institutional diagnostic, pointing to what is missing from the process of urbanization and explaining villagers reasons for rejecting its new institutional orders. November 7th, Administrative Restructuring of Local Government in Post-Reform China: state-led urbanization and beyond Speaker: Guanchi Zhang (Harvard Law School) Abstract: Post-reform China is featured by seemingly endless administrative restructuring ( 行政区划调整 ) of local government, implemented on a national scale. Several puzzles arise here: Why do the priorities of local government reform change so frequently? How should we account for inter-provincial variation? How does the legal structure and classification of local government on paper interact with the practice of government restructuring on the ground? This research will look at both the historical development and intergovernmental politics of local government restructuring, hoping to enrich our knowledge of the logic of and the tension within state-led urbanization in post-reform China. November 14th, Small Hydropower and the Low-Carbon Frontier in China Speaker: Tyler Harlan (Department of Geography, UCLA) Abstract: Since the 1950s, the Chinese government has used small hydropower (SHP) to drive rural electrification and local economic development in the remote, resource-rich west of the country. More recently, however, this same technology has been re-framed as a renewable energy that generates electricity for the national green economy. In this presentation I argue that SHP represents a broader transformation of rural western China into a low-carbon frontier, characterized by the rapid growth of renewable energy infrastructure far from urban centers. I

4 show how the frontier is simultaneously constructed as a site of ecological degradation and of untapped low-carbon value, both discursively and materially through preferential state policies for renewable energy expansion. This, in turn, enables energy firms and local governments to extract new profits from natural resources that may have competing uses. Drawing on policy analysis and twelve months of interviews with government officials, hydropower investors, and farmers, I argue that SHP on the low-carbon frontier privileges renewable energy generation over other local resource needs. At the same time, I show how local governments employ new SHP infrastructure for their own uses, such as powering nearby mining and mineral processing facilities. This presentation thus highlights the importance of examining subnational geographies of low-carbon transformation, and the ways that resources and technologies can be re-purposed for local and national development goals. November 21st, Gated Communities in China: An Urban Myth and the Ways to Explore Speaker: Miao Xu (Urban Planning Department, Chongqing University; MIT DUSP) Abstract: Gated communities are often considered to be the spatial consequences of neoliberal privatization; in the West, they are widely criticized for having negative impacts on public space, social integrity and the "right to the city." Nonetheless, gated communities are the predominant and domestically quite popular development model in China, fundamentally transforming the urban landscape over the last two decades. When the central government called for opening the gates and dismantling the walls of these communities, the general public voiced fierce opposition; local government continued to tacitly accept gated communities with their property managers as primary providers of neighborhood public goods. This talk begins from such contradictions and explores the myths behind the uniqueness of China s gated community development. In particular, I trace development models back to their historical prototypes, dissect the underpinning political-economic mechanism leading to gated communities, and explore the entangled environment of the localized development process. November 28th, Preempting "No Taxation without Representation": The Case of Taxing Private Homeownership in China, Speaker: Yueran Zhang (Department of Sociology, Harvard University) Abstract: The politics of taxing private homeownership in China has been highly contentious and mysterious. The party-state first announced its intention to enact a wealth tax on private homeownership in 2003, and after eight years of stagnation, managed to impose this tax in two municipalities, Chongqing and Shanghai, only in Drawing upon archival work and in-depth interviews, this research unpacks the policymaking process, which unfolded at the intersection of different agencies and different levels of the Chinese state, that underlay the enactment of this tax. Who were the early proponents of this tax and for what reasons? Why was the tax enacted only in Chongqing and Shanghai? How did the two municipalities adopt very different designs of the tax? How did the state try to preempt negative political repercussions and

5 taxpayers' resistance which this tax might have triggered? This research tells a narrative that addresses these questions. Spring 2018 February 6th, Sequencing Property Rights and Urban Planning: A Comparison of American Zoning and Chinese Detailed Control Plans Speaker: Saul Wilson (Department of Government, Harvard University) Abstract: While similar to American zoning in many technical aspects, Chinese detailed control plans play a substantially different role in the distribution of property rights. Whereas American zoning was invented long after privately held property was widespread, and hence represented a diminution of extant property rights, Chinese detailed control plans clarify what property rights the state will sell to developers. As a result, the American zoning regime is more tolerant of developers seeking changes to zoning, while the Chinese system generally sees such behavior as an effort to get discounted access to state resources. Nonetheless, developers in both countries seek to influence planning restrictions: American developers do so through open negotiations with local governments, while Chinese developers are forced into more surreptitious lobbying. In the long run, inflexible planning restrictions make it very hard for anyone but the government to undertake even the smallest urban renewal projects in China; on the other hand, the state is able to get a higher share of land use value. Hence, while Chinese detailed control plans may formally resemble American zoning, they perform different functions with sharply different implications for urban development and redevelopment. March 6th, The spatial pattern of Crowd Innovation Spaces in Shanghai Speaker: Haijing Liu (MIT DUSP) Abstract: In 2014, the Chinese central government began an initiative - mass innovation and entrepreneurship as its new strategy of economic development. Crowd innovation spaces, which include incubators, co-working spaces, accelerators, maker spaces and so on, were promoted as the physical manifestation to fuel this economic development strategy. As a result, the establishments of crowd innovation spaces have since received significant funding from both the public and the private sector. Thus the number of crowd innovation spaces has grown exponentially over the years. With this considerable growth speed, crowd innovation spaces have started to exhibit a distinctive spatial pattern and make an impact on the urban form. However, few systematic studies have been carried out to understand this spatial pattern and the mechanisms behind it. March 20th, The Revealed Preference of the Chinese Communist Party Leadership: Investing in Local Economic Development versus Rewarding Social Connections Speaker: Siqi Zheng (MIT DUSP) Co-authors: Matthew Kahn (USC), Weizeng Sun (Jinan University), Jianfeng Wu (Fudan

6 University) Abstract: Over the last 30 years, the Chinese government has invested in new industrial parks with the intent of stimulating urban economic growth. The central government delegates the site selection decision to provincial leaders. A principal/agent issue arises because the central government prioritizes efficiency and equity criteria while the provincial leader may allocate such place based investments to reward socially connected mayors. We present a revealed preference test of industrial park site selection and document the willingness of China s provincial leaders to sacrifice economic development in order to reward social connections. We examine the causes and consequences of this misallocation of capital. April 3rd, A State Beyond the State: SOE Urbanism in Shenzhen and Urban China Speaker: Ting Chen (ETH Zurich) Abstract: In semi-marketized urban China, theoretically, State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) with state background are perceived as the corporate alter ego of the state. The reality however, is quite different. Their operations may be somewhat independent of their supervising agencies. Because of that, they have become the key protagonists of China s distinctive SOE urbanism. To observe China s SOE-led urban construction after its open door policy, this research looks at the 35-year-old urban core of Shenzhen, China s first Special Economic Zone. Based on a detailed study of distinct SOE-land types in terms of the changing property-holding structure, power structure among relevant stakeholders, and several other aspects it presents SOEs as a different kind of state power, positioned beyond or above the state. It shows that under specific conditions, some SOE-land can serve as engines of top-down gentrification, creating exclusive spaces for the upper-middle class minorities in the city, while other selfevolving SOE-land can serve as indispensable refuge spaces for the city s marginalized middle or lower-middle classes, as well as their formal or informal small and medium enterprises, which remain key drivers of the city s economy. After an evaluation of various SOE developers urban performances and the differing socio-economic influences of SOE-land transformations, this research improves our knowledge of SOE urbanism in terms of planning and governance (or lack thereof), and points out the threats posed by ubiquitous large-scale projects in tabula rasa, resulting exclusive and homogeneous urban enclaves. It further reveals potentials for an urban development that matches a long-term socio-economic demand in rapidly-changing Chinese cities, by learning from the socio-economically inclusive, mixed-used neighbourhoods observed in self-evolving SOE-lands. April 10th, The Role of Human Capital in Shaping the Economic Geography of Entrepreneurship in China: Perspectives from Urban Agglomeration Integration Speaker: Rui Du (MIT DUSP and Center for Real Estate) Abstract: Using firm birth records and startup data matched with prefectural-level characteristics, this paper analyzes nearly 300 prefectural-level cities to examine the role of

7 human capital in shaping the economic geography of entrepreneurship in China. In particular, we consider human capital pool and urban amenities that entrepreneurs value. We document strong positive entrepreneurial effects of both local human capital and human capital spillovers from mega urban agglomerations of integrated cities. Our results also suggest that negative externalities from cross-boundary pollution and local consumer amenities both matter in attracting innovation-driven entrepreneurial activity. Strong human capital spillover, negative externalities from cross-boundary air pollution, and large gains from access to surrounding economic mass together highlight the mega-urban agglomeration integration in China. Finally, we discuss policy implications concern promoting local entrepreneurship through enhancing intercity coordination efforts within the urban agglomeration as well as improving transportation infrastructure and traffic management. April 17th, 什么是中国的 市民化? Speaker: Yingfang Chen (Shanghai Jiaotong University) Abstract: 市民化 在今天中国是一个具有特殊重要性的社会体制 在制度上, 它以土地制度 户籍身份制度等国家基本制度为依据和框架 在经济发展中, 它同时粘连并支持了征地 / 城市开发 城市力竞争 社会流动 / 社会分层 人口调控等重要体制 在政治上, 它被认为具有供给合法性和维护社会稳定的重要功能 但是, 这个制度也是中国诸多社会问题的根源之一 通过对 市民化 - 国民化 关系的分析, 我们可以从一个角度了解到中国社会转型困境的局面之一 April 24th, Are relocatees different from others? Relocatee s travel mode choice and travel equity analysis in large-scale residential areas on the periphery of megacity Shanghai, China Speaker: Jinping Guan (MIT) Abstract: Residential displacement by urban regeneration in western economies and passive relocation in eastern countries have attracted the attention of researchers. Over the past decades, Chinese megacities have undergone massive passive relocation. They are reforming their old downtown areas and demolishing substandard housing. The government relocates residents to affordable city-peripheral large-scale residential areas. These residents are called relocatees. So far, few studies have explored relocatee and non-relocatee on travel-modechoice preferences and travel equity in these types of areas with adequate resident samples. To fill this gap, this study conducts a survey in five peripheral large-scale residential areas in Shanghai, uses statistical analysis of individual demographic characteristics and transportationrelated decisions of relocatees and non-relocatees, and estimates travel mode choice models for three different groups (relocatee, non-relocatee, and overall samples). Consumer surplus difference is calculated as a measurement of travel equity. Results show that compared to nonrelocatees, relocatees are older, poorer, and have a higher mode share of bus and lower mode share of car. Non-relocatees' value of time ( per hour) is greater than relocatees' ( per hour). As for travel mode preferences, for relocatees, the males tend to choose motorcycle,

8 moped or e-bike, then bicycle. For non-relocatees, the males tend to choose motorcycle and then car. Relocatee has a 6.88 per person lower travel quality than non-relocatee. Megacityperiphery development and relocation process have a more negative effect on relocatee s travel than on other population, from a travel equity perspective. This study contributes to the literatures on travel behavior and equity in megacity peripheral areas in developing countries. The findings point to important implications for the peripheral area s policy. May 1st, Urban Beautification in Beijing's Old City from the 1990s to the Present Speaker: Xinyue Gan (Urban Planning Department, Tsinghua University; Anthropology Department, Harvard University) Abstract: Urban beautification is the package of urban policies and planning strategies aimed at creating a high quality and orderly urban built environment, so as to develop a competitive and attractive urban investment environment and (re)construct a good city image. This paper explains urban beautification in China as a kind of urban regeneration with spatial exclusiveness. By reviewing the urban regeneration in Beijing s old city since 1992 and taking two case studies of ongoing voluntary housing relocation and "improvement of street built environment programs, I argue that urban regeneration in Beijing old city has always emphasized urban beautification to achieve economic or political goals through the spatial exclusiveness against citizens. Because the power structure in this process has not been fundamentally changed, the right to the city is hard to guarantee. From urban beautification to urban regeneration within citizen participation, the core issue is all the social groups should be guaranteed to have democratic participation in the domain of decision making in urban politics. Improving the rental housing system in the process of housing upgrading in historical districts and constructing the platform of negotiation towards street built environment might be one of the solutions.